Adam Torres, Kathleen Tepley and Heath Goldman discuss Los Angeles Consulting Group events.
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Show Notes:
The Los Angeles Consulting Group July Spotlight is packed with new events and experiences. In this episode, Adam Torres, Kathleen Tepley, Founder of Los Angeles Consulting Group and Heath Goldman, President & CEO of ICON Wealth & Legacy Partners, explore LACG and what event participants can expect.
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).
About Heath Goldman
Acting as the Financial Architect for business owners/real estate entrepreneurs, Heath helps them save money and create a lasting legacy utilizing a unique 6-step planning process. In addition, I coordinate the collaborative efforts of their 5 key advisors. This typically includes the CPA, attorney, insurance professional, investment professional as well as their CFO to help with the creation of a customized financial plan. His process can potentially help already affluent business owners or real estate entrepreneurs to reduce or eliminate ordinary income, capital gains and/or estate taxes.
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 a special episode. We have on Kathleen Tepley, who’s the founder of Los Angeles Consulting Group, and Heath Goldman, who’s President and CEO over at icon wealth and legacy partners.
And for those of you that have been following the show for a long time you know, that I’ve been bringing on Kathleen and Heath to do a monthly update for what’s going on in the Los Angeles consulting group, also known as L a C G. And we, every month they come in the show, talk about events, talk about what’s next and really just have some fun, honestly.
So I’m excited to get into today. So first off, just to start off Kathleen Heath. Welcome back. How you feeling? It’s summer. It cannot be better. I’m back in Minnesota. Happy to be here. And Heath and I have a planning call after a little bit today, and we’re excited to see what the rest of 2024 has in store for our opulence community.
Yeah, Heath, what’s going on with you, man? It’s been a while since we’ve caught up. How are you? Things are going great. Appreciate it. Always enjoy being here and sharing the calendar with all of your listeners. As many of you know, if you’ve been following the calls Kathleen and Opulence and LACG are putting off some amazing events here in LA and always looking for great professionals and guests to be joining us.
Yeah, and I guess just to get us kicked off here Kathleen, I know you’ve been having some growth or Heath, whoever wants to tackle this, but as we were kind of , in our warm up call, and we’re talking about the nature of websites and don’t worry for everybody listening. I am not going to be talking about programming or anything like that.
So you can continue listening. But yeah, our, Our site, we’ve been growing traffic’s been growing. So like, we’ve had to make additional investment. Thank you to all the listeners that go into our website and check. And I was telling, talking to Kathleen about this and she’s like, Oh my gosh, we’re going through the same thing right now.
So like, what’s taking place over there, Kathleen, give us the updates. Well, it’s very exciting for us because of our global nature. We do events all over the world and we’re trying to really ramp that up. The website has to keep up with that. So , it was exciting that you mentioned the same thing.
We were talking about analytics and how the events, the first half of the year, normally we do about a hundred to 150, 15 events a year. Well, we just did 86 events since 2015. Wow. What do you attribute some of that success to? That’s absolutely amazing. Like , I got to talk to Chirag, man.
He’s sleeping over here. No, what do you attribute some of the success to? It’s amazing. You know, having that global exposure is number 1. I think number 2, it’s our incredible partners that brainstorm and have great ideas, themes, topics. It’s the families and high level investors themselves that have great ideas that we.
We never say no, we listen, , we determine how it can happen. So we always figure out if there’s a way and then we put it around something else. So if we go to San Francisco, we don’t do just one event. We do three to four events within a two to three day period. So I think it’s the strategy. But right now it depends on, , our support.
We’ve got great team members. That’s why you guys share. LACG. We produce most of these events. So like you do, Adam, you get to do what you do great because your team builds out. Well, he, Ethan, I, and even Brian get to do what we do great. In the community, because we’ve got the team behind us building this out.
But when I saw what needs to happen each weekend for the next five weekends, before I go back to LA, I was like, wow. I don’t even know this language. This is edible. This is incredible. And seeing the analytics, like what’s driving it, what’s driving the numbers going up. So it’s all your listeners. It’s all our community.
And that’s why we spend five weeks now and five weeks during December, January focused on the internal and the build out of upcoming activities. Heath, I want you to jump in on that one, man. What’s your opinion? Like , what do you attribute some of the just overall success to and like the demand for , what your team’s doing?
Like, what do you think it’s from? I think it’s giving people what they want. One of the things we keep hearing about is that LA is so fragmented. It is from the professional standpoint. There’s so many different organizations and events, but , from a family office perspective, these families have nowhere to go.
It’s there. Hey, by the way, I’m, you know, I’m inviting another family out or we’ll get together with a couple other families. When you have events that are specifically geared towards the family office community, they gravitate to that as long as you’re not making each other. Pitch events. They don’t want to be pitched.
They want to hear what events others are going to. They want to invest in deals with other family offices. They want to co invest. They want to be shown deals. They want to show deals. They don’t want to be pitched. And so when you can put on world class events where family offices and next gens can come together in a safe environment, they’re going to keep coming back.
And that’s what we’ve continued to build and do here. So I know we’ve kind of tackled many of our calls from the standpoint of upcoming events, things like that, because normally you just have so many, like you just mentioned over 80, but I know this month in July I don’t know if we brought this up or not, but it’s a little bit slower.
You don’t really do too much. This is what you mentioned. You start doing your planning for the next, I don’t know if I should use the word barrage, but like 87 events is amazing. We’re only in July. But I, I thought it’d be interesting to maybe take this question from the opposite point of view, a good break.
And that is like, what did we always talk about? Like coming to events, things like this, who’s the right person. Yeah. How do you choose who you actually partner with to throw events? Like, , and the people that match, you know, the ethics behind the organization, like, how do you do that? Because when we use the word family office or partners, I mean, there’s thousands, there’s a lot of them out there.
I don’t know if thousands, but there’s a thousand for sure. How do you choose? Like, what’s a good partner if you want to start there? Yeah, I think it’s 2 different perspectives. There are going to be some events that we do that will be only for professionals that work with family offices. And that’s our quarterly real estate happy hour, where it is definitely service providers slash professionals, but.
We will have some family offices there and, some syndicators, but there are other events where it is just family offices and , we do our due diligence. You don’t just call yourself a family office and realize that you’re, you know, only worth 25 million. Now, 25 million is a wealthy client.
Do not get me wrong. I am not suggesting that, but single family offices, the number that you typically hear is a family that’s worth 200 to 250 and above. Okay. So, , we do do our due diligence. We have every right to ask if you’re going to be coming to our events. Disclose some information privately and , you build out these events with the right types of people and when they meet other families and they’re like, well, I’ve never been to an event like this and this is a safe environment and no one’s here pitching me.
They’re going to continue to come back and, Kathleen has done an amazing job. Yep. I’m thrilled to be part of her community, now part of her team when it comes to opulence and just continue to put on world class events and it continues to grow by word of mouth. Adam, you know that better than most people.
So what do you think, Kathleen, like how do you choose your partners that you want to throw an event with? So I think it’s a little glimpse behind the scenes. We usually 20 requests per week. Ideas ideas of sponsors or themes topics people that want to do a series of events. And. So it’s listening to the ecosystem and the voice of the community, which we try to share that in this ecosystem.
That’s global of all of the above and and he can talk about the 5 legged stool. But what we do is we’ll listen to what the families are having pain points with. Where they want growth, who they want for resources, what type of topics they want to hear. So when I say resources, maybe an accounting firm that they’re very consultative and they’ve got these great opportunities to speak on different themes within a lunch series, they never pitch.
And so we might create a monthly series of lunches in San Diego, San Francisco, NLA, just with them. Knowing that’s going to meet the needs of the profile of those attendees to, as Heath mentioned, the real estate investor reception rate event. Like we just had the most amazing event during milk and week and had over 68 people registered at a little above 50 percent that showed up.
And we knew that because of milk and week and there was no topic. There was no discussion point. 3 sponsors, but everybody was talking about the different deals that they’re seeing and some of the pain points they’re having. And when they left the sponsors most of the sponsors of the 3 said it was the most amazing event and they’ve done 2 others with us before.
So again, careful curation looking at. What is needed out in the community ideas. We have a thing on our website you can put in there if you wanna be a part of the community, you wanna give us some ideas? We read every single email. Mm. Yeah. , and that’s one of the interesting things, and, I didn’t know this until I asked the question just now, but , I had a feeling that you were listening , to your audience.
Because I noticed that the content doesn’t necessarily for the events. It doesn’t stay the same. Like I see some new names up there. I also see some new opportunities like jets in capital. You have a family office retreat. Do you also have family matters? That’s a new one. I don’t remember seeing out there , in the past.
Then of course you have your staple, which is the original mixer, which will be taking place in October. So the audience is going to hear much, much more about that. But I feel like. And from me on the outside looking in, you’re definitely listening to your audience and because of that, I can see why it continues to grow and why the demand continues to grow in terms of , what you’re offering and the types of experiences that you’re curating. This one I did want to talk about for a moment or two. I know this is going to be happening in August and we’ll hear more in the future, but the family matters event that’s coming up. Can you just give us, I want to give the audience a little bit of a flavor for the types of events.
Cause when you say. Okay. Okay. You’re maybe solving problems or that’s not, those weren’t your words that you’re curating events towards the needs of the community. Like I want them to have a flavor, so it could be family matters. It could be whiskey Wednesday. It could be the office round table.
Like just give us a, go a little bit deeper on how you’re creating these events. So people have a flavor for it, but for everybody listening. I definitely want you to go to Los Angeles consulting group. com. We’re not going to go into each one of these events today, just so you know, but you can see them all on the website.
And I know there’s going to be more added towards the end of this month too. But so just to circle back Kathleen or Heath family matters, whiskey, Wednesday, Jetson capital, you can choose whatever you’d like really. And just kind of give us a feeling behind like what goes on at these events so people can understand.
So 11 caveat with events, it’s either a networking experience. So you’re meeting people that have like minded. That’s number educational focus. And 1 thing we both Heath and I didn’t share in the 1 of the success scenarios or how we create these, it’s extremely important for us at any of these events.
When we create these and we’re present, it’s all about making sure that the attendees meet the right people at the event. So we’re constantly on our feet, connecting people at the event, before the event, and after the event, just using the event as a conduit. For example, family matters. We have an amazing resource.
Speaker, Dr. Jeremy Lurie. He is a business consulting and family dynamic business coach years creating CEO CEO formats roundtables stepped into our realm about 7, 8 years ago, even went out as far as France to speak to our principals out in France at 1 of our family office retreats. But we created a series for him over 2 years ago, and we partner with Marsh McLennan.
Private client services, insurance company. And again, they’re a global firm. They created a series and it’s fully educational. They talk on all the pain points that families, multi generational families have when they’re trying to look at growth and succession planning and each family matters event, whether it’s Denver or Napa or.
L. A. San Francisco. There’s always a theme around it. And every single event, the families walk away learning something and having resources with other families in the room. That is that focus with the family matter series. I think we’ve done over 30 events with them. It’s part of the insurance side and on the family dynamic side.
Whiskey Wednesday. Do you want to talk about that? Heath and really what kind of that focus is. I, I’m not sure he doesn’t always attend, but he certainly helps me in curating this event with Michael. I’ve only been to whiskey Wednesday once. I love that event that used to be held on a private yacht.
Down in Newport Beach, and they would take two hour cruises. It would be for those audience members, you know, two hour cruises could turn into life on an island if you’re if you’re, if your name’s Gilligan, but, And it’s really about the curation that one more is about the tech and venture capital space than anything else specifically.
You know, Kathleen mentioned the five legged stools, and it’s important. I want to make one other comment, too. The five legs in no specific order, family office, private equity, venture capital affluent slash high net worth. And then and then separately investors and those are the five legs that we kind of focus on at Opulence.
And I think it’s important to know that some of the times the curation is based on the partner slash sponsor. So, CraftWeed has many clients and they may say, Hey, you know what? This event is meant for this audience. So, you know, they drive a lot of that curation. Dictation often times for for some of these events.
So it’s not just as if we’re just throwing events and inviting people. Sometimes there is a specific request or desire based the sponsor or partner that we are dealing with. So The other one I wanted to mention just very quickly Wine Wednesday one of my favorite events, you bring a beautiful bottle of wine to share with your guests, typically 30 to 35 other professionals, and we’ll put the food on the table and the people in the room, and it really is just pure networking some people will say it’s about the wine I, I love it when it becomes about the wine, just because I love drinking good wine.
But it really is about the networking. So, if you’re looking to grow your networking audience, and you’re here locally in Los Angeles that’s definitely an event you want to request to to be a part of. Hmm. And he’s not sharing Adam. It’s been around for 17 years. We’ve launched this, it’s really grown I go for, for the wine and the sushi and the guests, but you know, it’s, it’s, it’s a great we brought in all of our out of town clients that fly in from London and from Antigua.
And so it’s been fun when we do those events. So if you see them on the schedule and you want to know what they are, please just send an email to us and we’re happy to let you know if this is the type of event that you’ll get value in attending. Like you, Mr. Adam, we hope you come one of these times. Oh, I will.
I am, I am. This Jetson capital. What’s going on here? Private jet hanger in park city, Utah, man, you guys are just so fancy over here. What is this? What’s going on here? You guys are too fancy. Jordan Hutchinson a next gen family member out of a family office out of Utah. His first event that he launched with this title, Jetson Capital out of Texas had such an incredible turnout and they have again, there’s a profile, like he said, there’s a profile of guests.
They’re very careful in the invitation process. Well, we asked them, could we please partner with them and help them curate it? We’ll also attend it. We’re bringing some of our clients. But there’ll be GPs and LPs in the room. And so it’s for those that really want to learn about jets, sometimes cars, but also the word capital.
It’s all about raising capital or investing in certain initiatives. And there’s a lot of commerce that happens at that event. It’s very high level and we are just so excited to be participating as a partner to support them for their September event. So one last one, I want to go, go ahead, go for it. Yes.
Yep. Sorry to interrupt. I was going to say it’s so high level. I wasn’t even invited to that one. So I didn’t know anything about it until you asked her. So thank you for asking. All good. I’m on it. Well you know, that’s the way it works. Oh, I can’t, you already know, I can’t let both of you off without us talking about what I like to call one of the core and staple events.
And I know you do these multiple times a year, but the one that will be coming up in it will be in October. So original mixer talk to me about that on October 24th. If you could start this one, this is, this is, yeah, this is our, this is one of our favorite events. So it’s not easy because it takes a lot of it takes a village to put this one on long story short, our our third partner, Brian Rabinowitz, who’s at Markham and the West coast business development lead started this event at the Beverly Hilton pool bar many, many moons ago.
So this one’s about 20 plus years old now. But we do them quarterly now. It’s attended by about 200 professionals. That’s the service provider group. So it’s not going to be the family office and private equity too much. It’s going to be people who work with investors. It’s going to be basically bankers, attorneys, lawyers, MNA insurance, investments, whatever it may be.
We have about 12 to 15 sponsors around the room. Each one of them gets their own marketing table. Bring your wares, bring a couple bottles of nice wine or booze or whatever you want to pour to get guests to come over. And it really is just about being top of mind and networking. We are looking for those sponsors.
It’s a very reasonable mark sponsorship fee Kathleen can get you some information to the sponsors, but if you’re looking to be in front of 200 high level Valley and or LA professionals, service providers, that is the event for you. Yeah. And , that’s a great transition actually, Kathleen.
Yeah. If you could elaborate more on how sponsors can work, we talked about people attending the events. We talked about people potentially partnering with you and the organization on different events and curating different ideas. Well, what about sponsors? Sponsors that want to get involved, that have businesses, they want to get in front of these businesses.
Whether they’re speakers, they have a booth, speaker spawns. I mean, all kinds of different things. How can people work? That want to sponsor things? How can they work with the team? So we go on a discovery call and find out what the goals and objectives of the company and, or a professional is.
And then we will recommend either one of the events that we already have listed. The original mixer is one of my favorite to get them involved in. And then we will help them a little bit with the strategy. Cause if we know the goals, we can help determine, and that’s why we did 86 events since January 15th.
Because we did so many of those calls, but again, with this original mixer, we started it October of last year, where we put a very exclusive family office and investor reception 2 hours before this original mixer and we get 35 high level, either family offices and or ultra high net worth investors in the room.
And. The main platinum sponsor of the original mixer gets to talk about who they are, what they do, and they also get the list of all the attendees for that event. So again, the original mixer is a great starting point, 500 for a branding package, 750 for a table and branding package. Or 2, 500 is our platinum sponsorship, and then they get to attend the family office closed.
Reception from 4 to 6, but again, we are in our build out mode right now. We are looking for speakers. We’re looking for sponsors. If you go to our website, you’ll see our outbound invest summit. We’re doing their no October 31st to November 1st summit in Miami, Florida. And the next spring we’re doing New York and LA.
That is an amazing, amazing event that Heath brought to my attention where we met one of our favorite clients. So please reach out to us if you’re interested in talking about sponsorships and what you’re trying to achieve. We’re happy to, like you said, Adam is go through the back door and figure out what the goals and objectives are.
And we’ll see if there’s something on the schedule that is worthy of their marketing dollars. But most importantly, I want to mention one thing, listeners, if you do contact Kathleen, make sure you very clear that you are being invited to connect with us via Adam Torres and mission matters podcast.
It carries a tremendous amount of weight when we’re just cyphering through or cyphering through emails, which we do get many. Well first off, always fun and I can’t wait to next month. We’re going to do another one. I know there’s going to be all kinds of new events and whatnot.
Congrats on the 80 some, I feel like that’s an amazing accomplishment considering it’s literally July 1st today when we’re recording this. Oh my gosh. That being said, I know I mentioned it once, but let’s get another plug in there, Kathleen, for people to follow up and to connect, to get the newsletter, to stay on top of all this.
How do they do that? They can either go to our website at www. LosAngelesConsultingGroup. com. There is a couple of pages in there to get on the newsletter or request information, or email me directly at KJT, that’s my initials, Kathleen Jo Tepley at LosAngelesConsultingGroup. com. We want to hear from you.
We want to know what you’re trying to achieve, and we’re happy to support in 2024 and 2025 with these incredible events that are coming up. And for everybody listening, just so you know, we’ll put all that information in the show notes so that you can just click on the link and head right on over to the website and connect there as well.
And speaking of the audience, if this is your first time with mission matters, this is a daily show. So that means each and every day we’re bringing you new content and new executives. New ideas and hopefully new inspiration that can help you along in your journey as well. That’s what this is all about.
Helping you as well in, in growth along your journey. So again, hit that subscribe button, hit that follow button, and I look forward to to send you an episode tomorrow. And Kathleen Heath, again, thank you so much for coming on the show today. Thank you, Adam. Always a pleasure. We look forward to seeing y’all soon.