Adam Torres and Kathleen Tepley discuss Los Angeles Consulting Group.
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Show Notes:
Listen to the June event coverage for the Los Angeles Consulting Group. In this episode, Adam Torres and 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 on the show, just head on over to mission matters.com and click on be Our Guest to Apply. All right, today’s very. Special episode. It’s one of our monthly episodes where we bring Kathleen Epley on the line.
She’s the founder of the Los Angeles Consulting Group, also known as LACG. And every month I bring Kathleen on the line to talk about, well, first off, just to catch up with her. She’s my longest. Running a co-host on the show with a monthly segment. First off, I just heard, I just, we are looking at the calendar, I think we’re running on our one year anniversary.
And also we get to have some fun and get to see what LACG is up to. So Kathleen, first off, welcome back to the show. Good to see you. Good to see you, Adam. I feel when I don’t see you, I’m always having withdrawal symptoms. I’m just saying. So the fact that you’re the longest running show host, what are your tips to success on how you’ve managed to not be run off by me?
Like how, how, what are your tips for other people that wanna be on the show? So Adam, you know, you have so much experience in what works and what doesn’t work in this media world, and I think what’s, what I’ve really learned in doing this now for a year is to listen, to listen to you. You and Chirag have such great experience and you’re also very collaborative.
I love sharing ideas with you, and you’ll give me some. Different ways of thinking of it. So some of my, some of my suggestions would be, be consistent. Trust the experts that have more experience than you, and then also take a chance. Take a chance and do something. I love it. Well, it’s good to have you back and we got a lot to talk about because we got, some of my favorite events are actually coming up.
We got one coming up in June pretty soon, which I don’t wanna go into the events yet, though. I wanna some, we have a bunch of new listeners we’ve been blessed to that the show continues to grow, continues to break internal records, and I’m very happy about that. So let’s, first off, start off.
By just a, a quick background on LACG for those that don’t know what, it’s all about. Thank you Adam. Los Angeles Consulting Group. We are a strong global community. We provide business advisory services and support, but what I’ve noticed, I’ve been saying the last 60 days is 80% of our time is to give back to the community.
I. Help grow. And we do that by supporting these different initiatives, which we’re gonna be talking about today. And I love doing it. I get to choose doing it. I don’t have to do it. and I love the fact that I’ve got people like you and people that are on in the audience who’ll be listening to this as a part of our, ecosystem.
So thank you. Yeah, it’s, it’s a pleasure. Um, it’s fun for us too, and it’s fun to see. I’m sure I lost track. What’s your, event count? Either for this year or like what’s projected? How many of you done wherever you wanna take that number? ’cause this is an astronomical number.
I just want people to know how active you guys are. It is, you know we counted last year and I think. Between the marketing team and myself, I think we’re off a little bit, but it’s usually about 125 plus this year. I said, it’s not about just doing events, it’s about the impact and intention of doing the events.
So I said every single thing that we do or we support has to really have a return on investment for the attendees. And I will have to really think through and mm-hmm. Decide which ones are of quality. But in saying that in June we’re supporting 12 more events, which will close out our first six months of the year.
Then I get a little bit of time to go look at clo building the last half of the year. And even though I won’t be here, I will still be supporting a couple of major events, if not five to 10 of them. But we do a lot and we’re not an event company, but I love this. Adam, I love this. It’s so fun to see all you, and it’s, just a pleasure to have you part of our ecosystem of meeting other people.
Hmm. Talk a little bit about like some of the, niches that you typically cover in terms of events or otherwise, like what type of companies you’re working with. I. Our main focus is global family offices, family, multi-generational, family run businesses and investors. that’s our number one space.
I started out in the professional service arena, so our resources and our ecosystem comprised of m and a advisors, bankers, insurance providers, attorneys, accountants and other consultants and. it’s a pleasure because they all come together, whether you are supporting them in their own growth or having them as resources for that growth, it’s been an honor, and I’m gonna say it Adam, I’m gonna say it.
I’ve been in this business, in this industry for 30 years. So you tie up all of those relationships over the last 30 years, and this is our 15th year with Los Angeles Consulting Group. Wow. So in a few weeks, and we’ll share on when we get to that point, we’ll be celebrating our 15th year anniversary for Los Angeles Consulting Group at an event in la.
And we have such a great lineup and you are gonna be part of it. So I’m excited and it’s been such a incredible experience and I keep learning something every day and that’s what I love in meeting all the global people that we see from all over the world. Hmm. I wanna get into some of the events.
Let’s get into the events. So where do you wanna start with this one? Let’s tee it up. Tomorrow’s, let’s start about tomorrow. Close’s event. June 3rd, if you see that one. Yep. I see. I won’t be going. I won’t be going. But I made a commitment, made a commitment to the 150 family offices that’ll be going next year.
And I will be supporting the founder. It is the US global. Global Family Office Community Conference in London. It’s the biggest conference that they do yearly. It’s been going on for 16 years. Mm-hmm. And just before COVID, we launched GFOC in the US and have been growing out us now since, then.
We, run US initiatives for the GFOC, but this conference has the best speakers, the best attendees, and we do one in Beverly Hills in November. So this is the first one of the biggest conferences for GFOC. This year. They also launched their journal, which is a compromised, coalition of other experts in the family office space from real estate insurance what we’re seeing, trends in family offices.
That journal is a paper journal and a digital journal. They launch it on tomorrow and we’ll have access that for our community. I won’t have it at our big event at the end of this month, but we will have it later on. So I’m excited for this event. If anybody’s in London and they wanna attend, please let us know.
We’ll get you involved. Yeah. That’s great. And I, one of the things that I, don’t even think we brought this up before is that when you talk about doing events and, also like just your partnerships, like you’re truly are international, like you’re all over the place, London, France, like you name it.
Like, I, I, I like to bring that out for the, audience to know because it really is a, I, I think a global experience working with LACG. Yeah. It’s an honor. It’s an honor. I mean, I wish I could be traveling all over next year. I’m gonna have to do it, but when we do our France re retreat Oh, of course thing.
Especially when you do your South of France. Come with me. What is one with South of France, blah, blah blah. Go ahead, trip. That ain’t a road trip. that’s gonna be fun though. I’m excited to report it, to hear more about what you’re up to, because I already know it’s, a global affair.
It’s, and then some of the other things you got coming up, let’s see, a real estate family office like gi. Give us some more. That one. Oh, that one’s in Dana Point. Yes, I will be there. I have been supporting the IMN conference now for about seven to 10 years, and this one is their biggest, one of their biggest events, one of my fondest events.
And that is the real Estate and Family Office Wealth Conference. In Dana Point, we get over 400. Attendees, they have speakers from the real estate, alternative assets. We usually do a private dinner or facilitate introductions. They have the most amazing app, so if you’re gonna attend an event like that mm-hmm.
Having an app and being able to connect and do your own research is incredible. My job is to connect. I have. Clients that will fly in for this event, and we will be making introduction, but I love it. It’s at the Waldorf Astoria in Dana Point at the Monarch Beach Resort. It’s beautiful, and I, it just fills my heart and soul to be there for two days.
Yeah. And then right away as we start transitioning out of that and coming back, we then head into a big event in San Francisco for Opal Group. We will be considering this one of our community events that we support. Hmm. They’re doing an investment in forum on AI and technology. Mm-hmm. I won’t be attending that one, but we are offering it and supporting it, so if anyone wants to attend, you can always click on the link to apply to attend.
And we get these discounts to have you attend. Yeah. Our family offices are usually courtesy, so please let us know and they’re great ways to interact, connect, and learn. Hmm. Yeah, I’ve been to some of the family office events that you’ve done and the, the cool part is, or I think one of the unique parts is these are really they’re curated.
Like you don’t meet people in there that you kind of don’t wanna talk to. You know what I mean? Like, they’re always the right people are in the room. It’s not an open call and I. Feel like sometimes, you know, everybody’s time is just at such a premium that when you go to something, you wanna make sure the right people in the room that you wanna connect with and also people that come out that you don’t normally get to see or you wanted to see and you haven’t been able to catch up with.
Like, that’s always the feeling, the vibe I’ve gotten from the events. I love that you say that because I think one of the biggest pieces, when I say I’m gonna be there or not be there, what we try to do is create some private side events mm-hmm. So that you, they are cur curated. Yeah. They’re highly curated to who is a, who’s registering to attend, and if there is a specific theme for the event, and that is what we take pride in doing this after 30 years.
Hmm. You kind of get an understanding of the collaboration of different family offices and investors. And so when they gonna. Spend money to go to a conference or travel, it’s a value to them because they walk away with great relationships and many times they’re looking for safe investment opportunities that they’re always getting pitched at.
Well, we know about these and we’ll highlight them. So I love doing that aspect. You’re right. Curation is important. Meeting the right people Yeah. Is key. And not wasting your time. Yeah. talk to me about some of these other events that are leading up to the the one that I’m definitely gonna be at the original spring mixer, June 12th.
So give, give us some more of these. I love it. So what we decided to do for about five, six years now, right, during COVID mm-hmm. We’ve had the community reaching out, saying, Kathleen, it would be really great if you would put together a panel. And we had one of our family offices that recommended putting a panel together, two VCs.
Two private equity. Mm-hmm. Experts and a moderator so that we can hear from them. Mm-hmm. And right now, on June 12th, Thursday, June 12th, in la, we’ve got a panel on how PE and VC leaders are rethinking investment. Mm-hmm. Risk and long-term value. And our speakers are experts, and we’re really excited because this is now something we have launched.
And if you’re interested, please register to attend because that starts the day in la, which is a full day. This goes from three to four 30. I was just gonna say like this thing is getting. Stacked over here, Kathleen. I’m looking at it now. We’ve got this today. I feel today. We feel like this is And is it all at the Lux?
It is all at the Lux and the, I think this is turning into like a conference slash like this thing keeps on growing. No, but it makes sense ’cause everybody’s already there, so why not add more value traffic and your partners with opulence and everything. Yeah. Yeah. And if you’re there early, you can get through traffic.
We usually do a family office reception and we decided, I remember that. Yeah. Decided we’re gonna do that again. So why not have that educational component? Mm-hmm. Before from three to four 30. Then the family office reception is from four 30 to six. And then from six to nine is the mixer, which you’ve attended.
And we get 200 plus attendees. We have anywhere from 20 to 25 exhibit tables. Mm-hmm. And like I said, we are actually celebrating, this is our 15th year focus on Los Angeles Consulting Group in the new branding structure. Mm-hmm. And. What speaks to my heart is during the family office con reception, we are having Ethan Alexander of Rise Palisades speak.
They have created this, resource for all the families that were affected in the fires in LA and Palisades. Mm-hmm. And I have been having a conversation with them now for a couple of months. Really done some research on them. And I want Ethan to share more about what he experienced. He, he just said today he’s in his 12th closet.
Since the fires 12th closet and they haven’t even restarted building yet. Wow. So what he’s doing, what he’s experienced. I’m hoping the community comes out. Mm-hmm. This is between the panel event and the mixer, and then he’ll have a table at the mixer so that he can share more and really can give our community an opportunity to collaborate with them, because that is what I call the magic of the community.
Yeah. I love it. I mean, it’s a great story and I love that that you’re provi you’re allowing the platform to have that community component as well to it. Like, and, and to go over and above and to be able to allow these stories to be told. It’s awesome. Yeah, I’m looking, I’m definitely looking forward to, the original mixer.
I look forward to it every year and now I can’t believe we’re already in June and this one’s already coming up. Like, that’s pretty, that was pretty, and you’re gonna be there. That was pretty quick. I’m. Excited. We’ve been working on these for a long time and it is good. So I’m, I’m excited to be there to do some podcasting and some interviews and just have some fun.
Honestly, it’s been a while. I haven’t seen you in person in how long now? I think that one original mixer. I think that one originally. Wow. A year. It’s been a year. Wow. It’s been a solid year. But I guess the online component of doing these episodes, I feel like I see you all the time, but technically in a good way.
I mean, in a good way. I mean, yeah. And you, you went somewhere for me like you went. Jetson Capital was fun. Yeah. Going to see Jordan and his team. They were fun. That was a blast. Yeah. They’re good People love it. Thank you. Mm-hmm. Well let’s see. So now that’s, we only, that only takes us to mid-June.
You got more going on in June. June’s a busy month for you. We do, yeah. We are traveling this month, so we’re clo like I said, we’re closing out the first half of the year with a bang. Mm-hmm. And so the next week after the original mixer, we are heading to San Francisco. We love to go to San Francisco every quarter.
We have a big technology family office community there. Again, one whole day I like to stack ’em. Yeah. Because then whoever flies in, they’re not just. Sitting at one event, they might be able to attend two, if not all three. Yeah. And then they schedule meetings, but it starts I’ll be there from the 17th through the 20th of June if anybody wants to reach out.
Mm-hmm. Our event day is Thursday the 19th. We start with a family office lunch. Supported, hosted and supported by Eisner Amper, Michael Morris. And Wells Fargo, Dan Shapiro, we are really grateful to them because we had scheduled the lunch and they stepped in to support the lunch. Wow. It will have 20 seats at this table.
It is for family offices and investors. Those that have attended before are welcome. And new to our ecosystem, and it will be in San Francisco. It’s a great way to have a conversation. Mm-hmm. The second one, then that day will be cocktails and conversations. Mm-hmm. That’s been a hit that started a year ago in San Francisco, and it has grown.
So cocktails and conversations, we usually have a theme, whether it’s technology, whether it’s family office. Mm-hmm. Whether it’s mm-hmm. Professional service. This one is an open one because we want the community come out to close out the first half of the year. Mm-hmm. Again, in San Francisco it will be from four 30 till about six o’clock on Thursday the 19th.
Mm-hmm. And we usually get about 35 guests, great food cocktails, and it’s such a beautiful venue. It’s the vault. On California Street it’s just amazing it, the, these events have been a hit every single time. Yeah. We’ll close out the day with an investor dinner. Really close by. And that is for real estate investors.
Mm-hmm. Multifamily allocators, those that wanna invest in multi-housing in San Francisco. We’ve got Blake and Griggs properties, which is a client of ACGs. Mm-hmm. Sharing more around the dinner table, we usually get about 15. Very highly curated. So this is something that you’re interested in. Please let us know.
We’d love to have you take a seat. And that rounds up San Francisco. I love going to San Francisco. I will go back again in August. Yeah. That’s awesome. Yeah, I see it. You got, I like that it’s all stacked and I’m liking this model of like stacking all these things and then you’re, and then you’re also in Phoenix or Scottsdale.
We are, we’re going to Scottsdale. Hey, can you believe that? I can’t always say yes. I’ve got, you know, Houston, Texas, Denver, they’re always asking us, but Marsh McClennan said yes to supporting a Family Matters event on Tuesday, June 24th in Scottsdale, Arizona. We’re really excited. This is an educational event for COIs, so centers of influence.
Family offices, multi-generational families and investors to attend. They usually do it around lunchtime, so you get great lunch, great speakers, and then I offered to close out the day in Scottsdale with a cocktails and conversation at the Four Seasons. So we are excited. The one thing is we are looking for a sponsor.
So if anybody wants to sponsor this event and get to know everyone curated for you, please let us know. That’s on Tuesday, June 24th in Scottsdale. We hope to see you there. That is going to be an exciting event to really kind of close out June for our activity because then I get to take a few weeks and go home.
Oh, no, no, no. We’ll schedule something for you. I don’t like you rusting. Sorry. Oh, that’s mean like, like a good co-host. It’s all good. Yeah, it’s all good. And then yeah, so then, okay, so it’s Scottsdale’s where you’ll finish it out and I really like the do you get to discuss it often? I don’t recall.
Is you do a lot out there. Not, not a lot, but it’s been one of our desires and I just put it up in the universe and us. I’ve been wanting to do it more too. I’ve been wanting to be out there more too. I’ve had, we, we have How us? We have a bunch. It’s interesting. We have a bunch of authors out there. We actually have like three podcast hosts out there for our podcast network.
Yeah, we do. And it’s like, to me, I’ve always thought that mission matters. Would pro, like we do pretty well in la. We got a little bit of traction, we’ll call it. And I feel like it’s just so close there. And, and by the way, I don’t even know if you know this, but Matt Cook, the director of our agency, he lives in Scottsdale.
so he’s out there and he’s the one that runs our podcast agency and his family’s out there and I used to live out there, so I like it. And I have friends out there and stuff and I’m always like, why don’t we do more events in Scottsdale? And I’ll tell you why. It’s ’cause Sha Rock doesn’t go out there.
So, you know, he’s the key to the events in that. That stuff easily. I love it. So yeah, I love it. That’s probably not happening, so in all reality, but in my dream, I’ll, I’ll put that out there. One day we’re gonna do something, just like you said, we put it out there, something might happen. Just put it out there and there, there are gonna be other family matters events all over the, that’s awesome.
Us in 2025. So we’ll share as they come up. Right now, we only share them. Within this month. Mm-hmm. Yeah. But you know, I think what I’m excited about in closing out this month mm-hmm. Is you and I have talked about this. Yeah. And we’ve talked about evolving and adding a speaker to this podcast. Mm-hmm. So thank you for.
Planting that seed. Yeah. I think we need another guest. We need somebody we can pick on. I love it. That’s, that’s how it works. I love it. We need somebody we can pick on. I love who’s our first victim? You gotta get that first victim. We gotta let you know. I love it. I don’t know if he, I think we, I’m a little, I’m a little intimidated by him.
Our first guest. No, no, no. We got me and you. We can gang up on anybody. It’s fine. We can do this. Oh, I love it. I love it. You know what? We got a year working with each other. What are you talking about? Come on, bring in the fresh blood. All right. Alright, well, our next guest, or first in this series is Peter Qio, who is an American businessman.
That’s awesome. Recognized leader in strategic and financial turnarounds. Yeah, he was the turnaround king. Four Marvel Studios. Wow. He’s the one that came in and took Marvel Studios. Yeah. Flipped it around and sold it for tons. And you know how Marvel is just so successful right now? Peter and his son Colin, are just amazing, amazing people, and I had the opportunity to sit at a steak dinner with them mm-hmm.
In New York just before. And I have gotten to know him. Good friends now. Hmm. I’m so excited to have him as our first speaker, so thank you for allowing that. And please stay tuned. Yeah. I want this, the audience to stay tuned because he’s just a fabulous, fabulous person. So hearing from him and some of his learning cues, whatever he wants to talk about, I’m excited.
Yeah. And, that’s will come up at the end of June. So exciting on, well did we miss any events? I think we got it the next one. I see that’s, I know some, there’s gonna be some more coming up, but yep. For everybody listening, just so you know, to see all of these events, just go to los Angeles consulting group.com and we’ll definitely have a link in the show notes and come out to obviously there’s a, there’s an event section there you can click on apply to attend and definitely come out and attend that original mixer.
I’ll be out. There on June 12th, gonna be at Lux off of Sunset Boulevard. It’s a beautiful hotel. I’ve been to the venue before. I’ve been to these mixers before. You will not want to miss this. I’ll give you the last word, Kathleen. Anything last minute. I think for me it’s all about, you know, paying it forward.
Make sure that you, you know, give kindness to everyone. That’s our focus. And if you see someone today, give them a hug, say hello, or pay someone’s coffee in the Starbucks or coffee bean line. They love that. So Adam, to you and to everyone that supports mission matters, we love being collaborative with you.
So thank you for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed this. Don’t forget to subscribe or follow cause this is a daily show.
So each and every day we’re releasing new content and bringing you new stories to hopefully inspire you along the way. And your journey as well. Well, so again, hit those buttons and Kathleen looking forward to our next episode
thank you for having us.