Adam Torres and Kathleen Tepley discuss Los Angeles Consulting Group.
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Show Notes:
Listen to the January event coverage for the Los Angeles Consulting Group. In this episode, Adam Torres interviews Kathleen Tepley, Founder of Los Angeles Consulting Group, discuss upcoming events.
About Kathleen Tepley
Founder & CEO of Los Angeles Consulting Group (LACG), a global business development practice that primarily serves family offices, closely-held operating businesses, philanthropic foundations, and differentiated service providers in the private capital markets.
LACG hosts two different business development advisory practices, both managed by Kathleen.
LACG’s network enhancement practice proactively provides clients with strategic counsel and timely, curated introductions to relevant business partners within LACG’s ecosystem. Through LACG’s event production practice, Kathleen and her partners conceptualize and produce public and invitation-only private events for the global private capital community, designed to enhance awareness of the client’s brand (the Lido Family Office Investment Symposium based in Beverly Hills and Santa Monica since 2010 is an LACG supported production, for example).
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be a guest in the show, just head on over to missionmatters. com and click on be our guest to apply. All right. So today is January 6th. This is our happy, should I say our happy New Year’s episode for Los Angeles Consulting Group.
What do I say, Kathleen? I love it. I agree. Happy New Year 2025. I’ll take it. And for all our new listeners and audience that maybe don’t know who I’m talking about, Kathleen. Kathleen comes on once a month and it’s been a privilege. You’ve been coming on now for, is it what, six months, seven months going on?
It’s maybe more, I feel like. I don’t know yet, , I think we’re at our, getting close to our one year anniversary. And Kathleen is the founder of the Los Angeles Consulting Group. And I bring her on once per month and we go through all the events that are happening, the conferences, what’s in the news.
And really I just like to catch up to as well. So Kathleen, Hey, welcome back. Happy New Year’s. , I think this is our first time talking for the new year. Yeah. It is. And thank you for having me. It’s such an honor to spend time with you. I love it. I love to hear what’s going on with mission matters and all the different podcasts and interviews you’re doing.
And I’m excited to be a part of it. Oh, I’m well, we’re excited to have you here and to continue covering what’s going on with Los Angeles consulting groups. So I guess just to get us kicked off here, what’d you do for the new year? The holidays, like, what was all that about? Did you travel in back and forth?
Well, I think some of the guests know I spend a fourth of my time in Minnesota. That’s where my family is. My husband lives, my three daughters. And then 80 percent of the time I’m in Los Angeles home base where we’ve got community events going globally. So I’ve been home now since the end of November when we shut down the events for 2024 with our U.
S. Global family office conference for G. F. O. C. And we spend time on building out the new year, building out these exciting events. collaborating, partnering with other great event companies and making sure we offer these opportunities and experiences to our community. So that’s what I did is work, work, work.
And now we’re heading back to LA on Friday. So I’m looking forward to it. Oh, that’s good. That’s good. And you know what? It’s probably good about time for a good reset. I don’t think we’ve done that at least in a couple episodes and we’ve been very fortunate and blessed in a Q4 of 2024 and grew quite a bit.
So for the new audience and maybe those that are just catching up or a refresher for those that may have been around for a bit, Los Angeles consulting group, let’s do a reset. Maybe talk a little bit about that. I’d love to. You know, it’s been a privilege and an honor to be enclosed in this global community for the last 25 plus years.
We are a business advisory firm and we provide support services to our family offices, investors, private equity, family run businesses and and those that work for those organizations. But the one thing that’s important to us, Adam, and you know this, it’s about the tactics of networking, relationships, getting to know one another, education, spending time so that you can build your own ecosystem here in the United States and globally.
And so when I talk about the community, you talk about the community, it’s relationships such as yours and Chirag and Mission Matters that’s been important to us because that’s where we get to bring our families, our investors and our clients into these incredible experiential events, educational events, and sometimes fundraising for some of our nonprofits.
So we’ve loved doing this. I have to say it is a responsibility because many times they depend on us to make the right connections for the right events to attend, the right trips to go to, like you’re going to be doing a couple coming up. We looked at your schedule and I just love the collaboration part.
And it’s all about our partnerships and Community members that makes this successful after 25 plus years. So just to kind of close out the last year, cause we didn’t do our December one, I remember we didn’t it was already kind of dark. That being said, what was one of your favorite moments, events, something from last year?
Like I want to be able to look back at this one. So this is the first year that I went to Napa, we attended we brought a bunch of our family offices. Sounds rough. Oh, poor thing, had to go to Napa. Oh. Well, I didn’t know what to expect. It’s a rough life. Go, go, continue, please. Didn’t know what to expect, but we we partnered with You don’t know what to expect in Napa.
Never been on a wine tour. I’ve never been on a wine tour. I’ve never been in the Napa region. So it was such an amazing experience. I opening, we partnered with Opal group who was doing their private wealth and family office conference in October. And what we did is we partnered with four of our clients, all family offices, and two of our advisors to the family offices.
And we created four private events, a wine tour. A private dinner, a reception. And a networking event. And then we did all the three day events that the Opal group had in educating our families. And wow. That’s all I’ve got to say that wine tour, the tasting of the wine, the charcuterie board getting the families together.
And after that, you know, we’re still getting emails about how impactful it was for them to attend the curated private exclusive events. And that’s why we do what we do. Wow. That’s amazing. And I’m thinking about it and I’m like, ah, , every year that I’ve watched, and I feel like this is maybe year three of us just knowing each other for maybe a little bit more, but for the us being on the shows about a year under a year, , and every time I’ve seen like the growth and the different ideas and the conversations and the events that you’re putting together, and it’s really just trying to add more and more.
value to your community and trying to figure out new ways to engage and create experiences that are going to bring people together that have vested interests and want to help each other and kind of continue to grow that community. What do you think some of the successes, like, why do you think this has been so successful and it’s been around so long?
Like where do you think that comes from? I think the most important aspect of it is listening to the community. It’s listening to the needs and the desires and the pain points. A lot of times when I talk to families or organizational groups that want to provide support, I ask them what their pain points are and if you don’t listen to what they want to experience, whether it’s a private event and they want, 10 to 12 families that they can learn from, or they want to go to Napa, they want to go to, to an event like Opal Group, but they’re afraid to go because they know they’re going to get pitched will create some very strong Tactic of some kind, whether it’s these private events, and we’ll go with them, and then at the event we’ll introduce them to like minded families.
So I think it’s listening, and also being there to let’s see, Ken Kilroy said this very, very eloquently. He said, Kathleen, you and the community of collaborators are like Sherpas. In this family office investor community. And we take that very very responsibly. And we also try to support those that want to experience or meet new people.
And that’s our daily mission, making sure that we’re always listening. We’re always willing , to give, and we’re always making those introductions that will be valued over their lifetime of their creation for their families, their family run businesses, their professional careers, or even in networking and building their own.
growth strategies. We love it and we’re just honored to be a part of it. I know there’s a lot of dates that are still going to be up in the air in terms of events and things like that. And then just for context, I mean, , I don’t know how many events you did last year, but I feel like there’s a lot of them for sure.
can’t even remember, but I’m guessing north of 40, 50, something like that. Am I off? I think it was, it was a lot. I remember 117 events is what I knew it. I knew it. I knew I said, what did I say? 50. Let me put some respect on your name. You’re like, you’re right. 10 years ago. Yep. We did that 10 years ago. Oh, you better, you better correct me.
Put some respect on my name, Adam. How are you going to say I do in 40? That’s. No, Adam, it’s because of people like you and Chirag and our community that we’ve been able to say yes to do more and more of these events. It’s, it’s groups like the Global Family Office Community out of London that’s willing to come to the U.
S., willing to let us Do 25 events a year. And then we partner with their London event, their France event, and then their Beverly Hills event every November. And that’s what makes this so successful. It’s the collaboration that we all put so much effort in. And we’re just so grateful to have you as one of our partners.
And Look forward to 2025 because there’s a lot on the horizon, a lot of great things that we get to share in the next, we don’t have dates yet. And I know this, we’re recording this very early, but what can you go into just to wet the appetite , and just for everybody listening, I mean, , I’ll plug it for sure.
Los Angeles, consulting group. com sign up for the newsletter and you’ll get those dates as they’re available. There’s going to be more and more. And that’s. It’s the best newsletter. It’s very clear. It’s, concise and it lets you know exactly what events are coming up. So I’m a fan and it’s one that I subscribe to.
So definitely go to losangelesconsultinggroup. com so that you can sign up for the newsletter and then you’ll also be able to obviously stay up to date that way. So now that I gave my disclaimer, Kathleen. can we look forward to this year? So this year, because of all the traction and support that we’ve had, not only are we doing the global events in London in June and France in September we did Miami in October of last year.
We are going to New York. More regularly. Art Basel, we didn’t get to this year, but we will next year. We’re going to Dubai, Singapore, and these events typically wouldn’t be opened up to unless, you know, we had this collaboration with the community. So what gives us great pleasure is making sure that we curate these events for the right people that you’re going to an event that’s perfect for you.
So Dubai, we might do the Dubai event and they’re all in talks about the dates and we’ve already started building out the events. And if you go to the website, you can go to the events page, you can see past events. Which will give people examples if they want to do their own event. We’ve got investors, we’ve got fundraising going on.
We’re happy to curate events anywhere in the U. S. And it’s exciting because we see a lot of dynamic change in 2025. A lot of our family offices that are getting more involved in doing their own events. They’re heading to Washington to speak Congress. And again, any of these opportunities, if you have interest in it, we’ll make sure that we make those introductions and get you involved.
And that’s what my goal in life till the end of my retirement, where whenever that is is to get you guys involved in these different communities and build out your own ecosystem. Hmm. What are some examples of like the the types of individuals? I know you have different communities, whether it’s family office, whether it’s investors, but I mean, a lot of different, like, so give maybe some of the main niches that you work in and that of the communities.
So we have a client from Germany and London, and he is moving to the South Bay. So probably Palo Alto or San Francisco, he’s in the VC world. And so we’re very heavily ensconced in the family office. VC and investor world. And we’re looking forward to building them out in that aspect. We do a lot of technology.
We do it a lot of AI. Well, we’ll be in France this year for a retreat. And this will be principals of family offices. We’re going to go to South of France. Beautiful. Kind of like your Napa excursion. Poor you like that kind of like. Provence, Provence. Yes, private, privatized hotel or castle. We’ll be going there this year.
It’s been done the last five years, but I will be going this year to support the group. London in June, we’ll do more in London, but London in June, it’s our Second biggest event 150 family offices. We do a lot of private equity events We do our real estate investor reception. We try to do that quarterly I love palo alto so last year or when we did the napa event We did a private dinner at a restaurant family run restaurant in palo alto That was amazing.
So we’re looking to do a few wine events in palo alto Dubai event will be new to us. The Singapore event will be new to us. I think build more on our VC and private equity, but again, everything’s done with high level intention. We’ll listen to the audience. So if people have comments, they can do it on our website, give us, Hey, we’d like to see more of these types of events.
And daily, I don’t even know where they get our connections. But we’re getting ideas and even people that need pain points solved, we’ll try to help guide them to certain events if they’re fundraising for a fund or they’re trying to build a real estate equity fund, we’re happy to point them in the right direction.
So very excited. Yes. , what events can you tell us about that are on the calendar? I think you have the original mixer coming up and some other ones. Like, what can you tell us about that’s on the calendar right now? Let’s get people excited. We do. So January is launching some of our fundraising initiatives for our family offices.
That’s one of the key requests is families want to safely know about opportunities that are out there. I can say this publicly, we’ve got an event that was supported by Genie Bus of the Lakers Metta World Peace of the Lakers are supporting this initiative and it is a fundraising initiative.
I won’t say the name of it, but it’s private, a private investor presentation. We’re doing a private lunch on or first we’re doing the virtual presentation on January 8th. and January 22nd. So if you’re interested in listening to this initiative on gaming it is the most incredible experience I’ve ever done.
What is one thing that you and I talk about a lot? We talk about family and, you know, maybe game night with the kids. So we’ve got , an initiative that we’ll be launching Soon that Jeannie bus has been one of the original investors in and so we’re doing a virtual event on the eighth. And the 22nd, and then we’re doing a private round table luncheon in Los Angeles on the 30th of January and getting together 16 investors.
So if this is something your family offices or investors are interested in, Please apply and register online because these guys are incredible. The one thing that I love the most about this group is for those special needs children. And I have a couple of grandchildren with autism and their games.
And they’ve got Monopoly. They’ve got you name the games that we played as kids. They have gotten the IP rights to use these games. And it is incredible. And they’re building it out for special needs kids so that the schools will have it available for them. And if you want to come and help support, please go to the website, losangelesconsultinggroup.
com and register to attend and hear more about this initiative. That’s one of my exciting initiatives through That is big. That’s a big deal. Like that’s interesting too. And I like this, and I like the format too, by doing some of the like online side of things. And you got multiple things. So multiple times that people can attend so that they can get the information.
It’s really good. Cause I think a lot of times, sometimes people, if even if they are looking at an opportunity, sometimes it can be intimidating to go. In person the first time, like what, when you don’t even know necessarily what it is, but in this case, when they can look further and then, okay, this is interesting, then decide , if it makes a lot of sense for them to continue to pursue, but it’s very uh, non confrontational it’s easy.
It’s like, you can go learn. You can learn, yeah, yeah. And organic for sure. It either speaks to you or it doesn’t, but , that’s good. And, and they do from home and then the comfort of home. There’s nothing wrong with that. And I guarantee you, if they come in person, they’ll meet people in person. We always make sure they meet some of the other guests.
So when they walk away, they’ve got these new relationships and they’re safe relationships. Do you love that? They’re vetted to be able to get in in the first place. Yeah. Yes. But you and I talked about the next event, which is something that I was supposed to attend in September in Utah, and I couldn’t make it.
I got the flu and couldn’t make it, but they’re going to be in Vegas coming up on January 24th and it’s called Jetson Capital. And this is for high level family offices and investors that are allocating. And so it’s GPs and LPs. You can register on both sides. If you want, you’ve got initiative and you want to share it with some of the GPs, you can also register to attend.
We could post support this event. This is not our event. Jordan Hutchinson, a Black Ocean capital next generation family member of a family office. Jordan is such an amazing guy, and we are so excited that this event has been really built out. We’re hoping to get our collaborator to attend and interview people at this event, so stay tuned.
Oh, I’m in. I’m in. I already looked at my calendar. I’m in. I’m, I’m, you better. Stay tuned. I love it. Tell Jordan to send the jet, man. No, I’m just kidding. But the cars, the cars that are there, the jets that are there, it’s such an incredible event that we hope to see you on Friday, January 24th in Las Vegas.
Oh, I’m there. I’m there. I’m not even worried about that. That’s there. That’s on the calendar and done. And then you also have in the spring. Oh, you have a family office round table. you have more on here.
I see. Yeah, we had the San Diego. So last year in October, we launched San Diego Eisner Amper office. And they do a round table luncheon where we get 12 to 16 family offices and investors at a lunch, go around the table. Everybody gets to meet each other. And we usually have a speaker. Well this will be our second one in San Diego.
We’ve done 16 events for Eisner Amper in San Francisco and Beverly Hills, but this is their second one in San Diego. And the venue is gorgeous. You’re looking over San Diego. You’ve got , this amazing food. And again, you get to meet everyone at the table. You get to share a little bit more about. Who you are.
And again, this is not a pitch event. This is a family office round table, get to know other family office, family office principals. And that’s on Tuesday, January 28th in San Diego. I do have a little bit more room. If you’re interested, please register to attend. I will be hosting this for Eisner Amper and we’ll have their amazing team there.
And it’s just such an intimate group that we hope that we have a full table again. So please let us know if you can attend. That’s awesome. And yeah, I see that’s the San Diego one. And then you got January 2, 30th, right? Yeah. That’s the, so that’s a January 30th is the private investor election. Yeah.
That’s the election for the private investor. So the, from the online side and then whoever makes sense to, okay, I got it. I got, I told you that you’re over a hundred events in. I’m like, come on. And then the big one, March 20th, that’s one of these ones. That’s my favorite is those is the big ones that you do too, as well.
The original mixer. So the original mixer, 2025 that, and that’ll be the first one for the year. Yeah. So maybe for those, the original mixer, like tell us about it. So it’s been around for 18 years, originally founded by Brian Rabinowitz. He’s with CBiz and Heath Goldman of Icon Wealth and Legacy Partners.
And I, we’ve been supporting this event with Brian for those 17, 18 years. And this event, we get over 250 guests. We do a private Family office closed reception before the mixer from four to six, and then the mixer from six to nine. Mm-hmm. If you are a platinum sponsor, $2,500, you get to attend the private closed event.
You also get to speak to the families, and then if you want an exhibit table, you can be a an exhibitor and it goes to all of the 40,000 connections with the original mixer. So everybody gets. To see I don’t know if we get you at this event, but we are hoping to get you at the next event that we do around June and we’ll have you participate and interview all the London.
I’ve been looking for a reason to go to London though. Come on, Kathleen. You’re invited. What’s the London date? Do you want to? Do you want to? That is I’ve been looking for an excuse to get to London. You think I’m joking? I’m like I haven’t, I haven’t traveled. I haven’t even traveled since before COVID I have not been to and to Europe at all.
I haven’t even been international since before COVID and one of our biggest. Big audiences is the UK and that’s a big podcast and download audience. So I’m like, wow, that’d be interesting. Like, would anybody even care if I came to London? Maybe, maybe not, but you would care.
Okay. One person cares. That’s oh, they would love you. Our GFOC community would adore you. Come on over to London too. This is getting good, man. I’m over here picking out my travel. Chirag make that happen, man. That’s awesome. Oh, that’s a little snapshot of January and , we’ve got coming up in March 20th, but most of our events will be updated in the next couple of weeks.
Like I said, I’m going back to LA on Friday, the 10th. I’m looking forward to getting back. And I can’t wait for our first event in person. Amazing. Well, Kathleen, this has been so much fun having you back on the show, catching up. We’ll get our February episode in soon. And one last time, if somebody wants to follow up and learn more, how do they do it?
Please come to www. losangelesconsultinggroup. com. You can apply to register for our newsletter. You can also click on to apply for any of these events and keep an eye out because we have 30 more events to add within the next month. So please, we hope to see you at one of our upcoming events and we’re happy to support you.
Fantastic. And for everybody listening, just so you know, we’ll definitely put the link to the website and the show notes so that you can just click on it and head on right over to losangestconsultinggroup. com. And speaking of the audience, if this is your first time with Mission Matters and you haven’t done it yet, make sure you hit that subscribe or follow button.
This is a daily show each and every day. We’re bringing you new content, new ideas, and hopefully new inspirations. to help you along the way in your journey as well. So again, hit that subscribe or follow button. And Kathleen, thank you so much. Good to be here and good to see you. Happy new year, Adam.
Happy new years. There we go.