Role Reversal: Ira Gluskin Interviews Brian Ginsler on The Unlimited Podcast

Foreign. This podcast is brought to you by Gensler Wealth. The information discussed today is meant to be general in nature and not tailored to your specific investing circumstances. This means that you should talk to your regular Gensler wealth advisor or your own advisor before acting on any information we discuss today. Nothing in this podcast is intended to be a solicitation, but and past performance does not guarantee future returns. If you are listening to this episode to hear my smooth interviewing style, you will be disappointed as today I am not the interviewer, but rather the interviewee. Oh, hello, I'm Brian Gensler, host of the Unlimited podcast. But not today. We're doing a little bit of a twist. Ira Gluskin, our number one most listened to guest, is back and he's going to interview me. Now, Ira is known to be a pretty tough and pretty rigorous interrogator of companies when he was an investment analyst and chief investment officer of Gluskin Chef. So there's going to be some hard questions coming and hopefully I'm ready. Let's go. Welcome everybody to another episode of the Unlimited podcast. This is a twist. You've probably figured it out already because you can see I would say my guest, Ira Gluskin, but it's not really, it's the other way around. I'm Ira's guest today on the Unlimited podcast. I've met with Ira many times over the years here since founding my firm. He is a mentor, he is an advisor, he is a supporter. And I thank Ira very, very much. And every time we meet he says to me, you know, you do your podcast and you have your quarterly letters and you do whatever, but how come on the podcast you don't talk about yourself, talk about what Gensler wealth is doing and what's a family office and what are the services you provide. And I said, you know, I don't really love talking about myself and putting it out there. I'd rather have the guest talk, let the listeners hear what the guests have to say. I don't want to be selling all that sort of thing. Sort of not really my style. And every time we went for a walk, Ira would say, I think you got to talk a little bit about yourself. So finally, a few months ago, or maybe a few weeks ago, I said to Ira, okay, how about this? Ira was the most listened to episode of our podcast that we've ever had. And so I said, you know what might be interesting? Why don't you, Ira, interview me on my own podcast. And if you would do that, then fine, I will talk about myself. And our firm a little bit. So Ira sort of twisted my arm and then I twisted Ira's arm to come and be the interviewer. And so that's why we're here today. And I will say one other thing about Ira, for those who may not know him. He has a reputation of many decades of interviewing management when he and his firm, Gleskin Chef, used to do research. And he is known as a tough interviewer coming at you from different angles. So let's just say I hope I'm ready for this, Ira. I don't know what you're going to ask, but we will. Oh, you've got some paper now. This is scary. So there you go. So thanks everyone for listening. Thank you in advance, Ira. And I'll see if I'm still thanking you at the end after you interrogate me here.

Hey, that nice introduction, Brian. Thank you very much.

And.

Yeah, when I used to interview management, I used to be a brokerage analyst before that. So I've been interviewing people for 100 years. But I'm a lot softer.

Okay.

I'm nicer, not mean and nasty like I used to do. So, Brian, tell me something. Where'd you come from? Where were you born?

Right. I'm Toronto. Born and bred in Toronto. Thornhill. Grew up here actually. If you go back to another podcast episode that I did way back when I was interviewed by AI this is not the AI interview. This is the Ira Ira interview. But I did tell a little bit about growing up. So yeah, I grew up in Thornhill, Toronto with my parents and my sister and eventually made it to the Western Western University Ivy Business School.

So when you were growing up, did you know anybody who was in the financial business?

I had no sort of focus or knowledge a about the financial business or what I was going to do with my life at all. Even in the first year university, I wasn't really sure. I thought computer science and maybe that would have been good in this age of AI and whatnot. But anyways, thought computer science, that didn't work out in my first year. I just didn't love it. Went into statistics, wasn't really quite sure and then eventually stumbled into business school and then started reading the newspaper every day in the financial posts and all that. And that was sort of where the financial interest.

Where'd you go to business school?

Well, I went to the Ivy business school at Western, like as an undergraduate undergrad hba. And that was like the kickstart to my whole sort of where I am sitting today, to be honest. I went to Harvard Business School five years ago.

Did you do that right, right out of school?

What's that?

Did you go to Harvard Business School?

No, no, that was two years out.

So what was your first job?

My first real job out of school, I worked at. Actually I got hired by First Marathon Securities. I remember the team came in, I met Lawrence and the whole Lawrence, Bloomberg and the whole crew there at school. Got the job at First Marathon securities. And within a week or two of starting, there was a National bank mug on my desk because national bank bought First Marathon. Yeah. So I worked in investment banking for my first two years out of undergrad before going back to business school.

And you went to Harvard?

I did, yeah.

You have to be smart to get to Harvard.

I guess I like to say that as they were carrying the rejection letters out, mine fell off the top into the admit pile. Yeah, Harvard I was very proud to have graduated from for quite a while. A little less proud in the last couple years, to be honest, but it was a fantastic experience.

And did you always want to come back to Canada?

You know, I thought about working. I. I did work between my first two actually sort of getting my first intro to sort of the wealth management, financial management, investment management world was between my two years at Harvard Business School.

What did you do?

I'll tell you in a second, but you may not remember that you offered me a job to come between my two years of business school to work on the investment team with you. And at that time I wasn't quite sure that's what I wanted to do. I probably should have come right away. I eventually made it to your firm, as you know, but I worked at a. I worked actually at what would now be called a FinTech, but we didn't have that nomenclature 25 plus years ago. So it was a financial technology type of firm that helped optimize portfolios, sold into banks and other. For other advisors. So I did that between my two years of school and I thought we might want to stay in the U.S. it was right after September 11 that I stayed in school.

Did you get married down there?

No, we got married. My wife and I got married. We were there together. She's way smarter than me and she got a master's degree in education at Harvard University. We got married after we got back.

She from Toronto?

Yeah, originally Israel, now Toronto. So yeah, I was working there in the summer, thought we might want to stay there. But what happened was we kept flying back home. Our family friends were getting married, some people were having kids, et Cetera, et cetera. And my wife and I basically said, we gotta be in our hometown and be with all our friends and family. So to answer your question, didn't really think about staying there.

So what was your first real job?

Well, other than the investment banking, like coming out of hbs. So coming out of hbs, it was a horrific job market. Actually it was post 2001, the market had, the technology boom had collapsed. It was actually a tough time in the US too, after 9, 11, etc. And I actually ended up going back to national bank in investment banking. Did that for a number of years there, went over to CIBC investment banking. But having spent some time in the US learning about this investment management world, actually seeing a little bit of what family office is, a term that maybe everyone doesn't necessarily know, I was sort of starting to think about and looking for that. And eventually I moved out of investment banking into a multi family office firm, which by the way, no one really understood what we were doing at the time. But that firm has since been very, very successful. So that's.

Is that Northwood?

Northwood Family office.

So what were you actually doing?

So I joined Northwood when it was six or seven people. And I basically came in to help the CEO, you know, find new clients, in some ways help, you know, I wouldn't say run the business because I was, you know, early days in my career, but basically help the CEO run the operation, look after clients as well. Really got involved in many, many aspects of that firm, which I think was sort of a theme from investment banking. Getting involved in a little bit more than a typical analyst or associate would, and then Northwood and so on and so forth. So I ended up getting a lot of different experience which then allowed me to sort of work for your partner, Jerry.

So in brief summary, what did they actually do?

What did they do? They were, as we are now, a multi family office. And one of the. And what that means basically is a personal cfo, chief financial officer, basically for wealthy families. So helping families think through their investments, of course, and that talking about them, but also talking about us frankly. You know, overall financial picture, cash flow planning, tax planning, estate planning, anything that really touches a family financially, they did. They probably still do. And that's what. And that's what we do here.

Yeah. Am I right? I once went to hear the CEO talk and you know, when I was Gluskin Chef, everything was about the performance of the client.

Right.

But when the Northwood guy talked, it was the relationship with the client, the investment Results he didn't really care about.

Right.

As long as they weren't a disaster.

Right?

Have I got that right?

Look, I think. I can't speak for what CEO of Northwood had said, but I think for us, what we find is when you're helping a family holistically, there's. Investing is a piece of it, but it's a piece of a much larger puzzle. Your financial life is not just investing. And often the family or the client is left to navigate themselves. Deal with their accountant, deal with their lawyer, if they're doing something, you know, estate planning or something like that, deal with their investment manager or managers. And it's a lot for, you know, a person to do when they also probably have a job or a life or children or whatever the case may be. So that may be why the specific investment performance might not be the most critical piece in the entire puzzle. For us, it's helping the family holistically.

So how did you come to Gleskin Shepp? So we pay the most money?

I don't know. That wasn't the main thing. Although at the time you were writing in the newspaper and were very well known, you still are very well known, of course. And the firm just had a stellar, amazing reputation. And to be perfectly honest and truthful, as I sort of alluded to, it's very hard to explain to people at the time what a family office was. Multi family office. People weren't really sure what we were doing. And I'd always sort of, from our first meeting a few years back, sort of thought, you know what? This is the best firm in the country, and I'd love to see if there's an opportunity to work there. So I came to see you and I said, ira, you were nice enough to meet me a year or two back. More than a year or two back, actually, three, four, five years back. And I wonder if there's an opportunity to help your firm. Probably not at that stage on your team, but maybe I could work with Jerry or Jeremy Friedman, who was the president and COO at the time. And you said, okay, I'll send you in to talk to Jerry. So I met with Jerry in Jerry fashion. He asked me every question that you're probably not supposed to ask in an interview. He asked me how much money's in my bank account and how big my RSP is. And, you know, you can't really say no to Jerry. So you answer, the man invented inappropriate. And anyway, so I came in to basically be the, as we described it, the right hand Person to Jerry and Jeremy Friedman and help Jerry and Jeremy with whatever they needed as they ran the firm.

So how long did it stay there for?

I was there five years, so I played a bunch of different roles. So I was sort of the right hand person to Jerry and Jeremy. I was on the client wealth team or client service team, looking after clients, got involved with the product team and launching new products. I was involved in quite a bunch of different things. And at one point, Jeremy had asked me there was a transition happening as you and Jerry were moving towards retirement. And Jeremy asked me if I'd be chief operating officer. And again, when you take sort of.

The Northwest, what year was that?

What year? Probably 2009 ish, give or take. And so, you know, with the Northwood experience, helping the CEO there with a bunch of different areas, and then at your firm being involved in a number of different areas. I was very young. I, you know, it was a little bit of a stretch from my perspective, although I was ready to jump in and take the job challenge. And so eventually, you know, I was appointed chief operating officer of your firm. And it was probably in two, two and a half years, the greatest career growth of my career in total. Everyone that reported to me had, you know, was older than me, had more experience in their particular area. But I think when what I always said was, I may not know everything about, you know, your tech area or your trading area or whatever, but I actually had a unique position because I still retain that connection to the client side and looking after clients. And so I could sort of bridge the gap between what we were doing operationally and how it ultimately affected the client.

Did you realize then that Gluskin Chef really only sold Glaskin Chef products and that the client would be way better off, you know, dealing with somebody who had a whole bunch of products.

Yeah, look, that. I think the answer is yes. And this is not a unique model. There's lots of firms out there that only sell their own products. You know, that issue or that conflict, as I think you said on my podcast a number of years back, What I can assure you is there was never a time in my five years there that Glesk and Chau said to their clients, you know what? We're really not doing well in this thing over here. We're going to fire ourselves on this and send you back your money, and you go take it to another firm that does us equities better. No firm that has their own product has ever said that in the history of investment management. And so that's one of the reasons why when I started this firm, the plan was we're not going to make anything inside. We're going to go find the best of the managers that are out there. And if Gleskunsheff was one of them and they were the best at out of 15 things, if they were the best at one, I just want the one. I don't want the other 15. And that's.

So when you decided to go business for yourself, did you. What were you thinking? You know, and how different is what you are thinking versus what you're actually doing?

To the second part of your question. I actually think what we're doing is directly in line with what I was thinking and planning and hoping to do when I started this business. The last role that I had was at an investment management firm. So I left Gluskin Chef many years back. I ran an alternative lending business with some partners. Partners for a number of years. And then I went back into the sort of pure investment management world with a firm that was very good at primarily one specific strategy that was their core. And what happened in those number of years was that as I was helping clients with that core product, they were asking for other help. You know, look at this. You know, well, certainly on the investing side, where else should I put my money? First of all, because you weren't going to give 100% of your assets to a single strategy. That would be imprudent, as we say, on the investment side here. But they were also saying, hey, this organization's asked me to do some insurance. Can you look at this? And I'm a little bit worried I'm going to run out of money and I have a long life to live. Can you look at this? The firm really wasn't set up to do that. That wasn't their main thing. I basically realized. And it's not. Not. I'm not the first in the world to realize this because there's lots. There's lots of firms out there that do what we do. We think we're, you know, great at it. But there's other firms too. But I realized that clients needed a more holistic approach. They needed that. As I alluded to earlier on, they don't want to go and talk to figure out everything on their own and put all the pieces together. And so that's what I wanted to do. When you said, what were you sort of thinking about? That was. That was the idea. That was the thought process. And so, yeah, in 2021, I'm losing track Now I left that firm and started this.

So one thing that would, you know, would worry some people, well, am I going to be able to get the products that I'd like to sell to some future clients?

Right, yeah.

Was that ever an issue?

Not really because I'd been in this ecosystem for the Toronto wealth management, investment management ecosystem for so long, all the way back to investment banking. My investment banking focus was on investment and asset management firms, among other financial firms. Then at Northwood, I helped run essentially what would be called the manager of managers program. So I was, I've been evaluating and looking at managers in Canada for years, 20, 20 plus years. And then, you know, it was like Leskin Chef for a while. And we're always looking at our competitors. And so, you know, and have met everyone in the. Many people, you don't want to say everyone, but many people, many other firms in the industry along the way. So no, I wasn't worried about being able to offer that solution.

When you were thinking about going into business and actually going into business, did you want to materially diversify the products that future clients would have away from traditional stocks and bonds?

Yeah. My view, our philosophy here is that for wealthy families, pure stocks and bonds may not be a sufficiently overall diversified portfolio. There's sort of two elements to it. It's that point that I just mentioned. And then secondly is in our world, people expect their investment managers, their advisors to seem to know what's going to happen in the future and jump in and out of things and plan accordingly. And I've been pretty clear with all my clients, I don't have a crystal ball. I don't know what's going to happen in the world next week, six months from now, a year. Our solution to not knowing. And by the way, most people in the world, if not everyone in the world, doesn't actually know, no matter what they say. In my view, the solution is diversification. And so in our firm, we're allocating to equities, fixed income alternatives, real estate, some private equity, some venture capital for the appropriate clients, not appropriate for everyone. And then even within those categories, I don't know if you're following my hand. I'm thinking a pie chart. Within equities, we have value equity, growth equity, broad market exposure, ETFs, because those are free and most managers can't beat them. We have income equity where we use fund from one of your proteges, international equity. So even just within the equity bucket, you've got the first layer of diversification is asset class the next layer of diversification is within the asset class. And we think if we can pair up a whole variety of strategies, you know, we can't guarantee perfection for sure, and we can't guarantee always positive performance, but we think you have a much better chance of having a smoother ride and, you know, some capital protection when you have a little bit more of a diversified portfolio.

So when you first started, did you have to explain to potential clients what you were going to do or they already understood it?

It's a great question. I would say most of our clients are experts and really smart at what they do. And they're not necessarily experts. They're always very smart, but they're not experts necessarily in the financial and investing world. And so I would say most of the clients say to us, yeah, show us the plan, which we always do, and explain what we're going to do. And they say, great. Sounds like, you know, you know, you know what you're doing, we're going to trust you to take care of it. So that's sort of the majority of clients, based on my experience, how they deal with us.

Okay, well, explain to your audience.

Yeah.

What volatility means and was it part of your game plan to reduce whatever this volatility means?

Right. So volatility, you know, typically when you're talking investments, volatility means how to use very simple terms, how bouncy those investments are over the course of a week, a month, a year, over time, not to get too deep, but equities would tend to be typically the most volatile asset class, you know, and you can get into really volatile things like mining stocks or whatever, but at a high level, equities are typically quite volatile, but they also typically deliver over the long term, the best long term after tax returns. And so, you know, it's a little bit of an interesting dilemma. The reality is, if you have a long time horizon and sufficient wealth, and what we say in the sort of risk world over here is the risk capacity to handle volatility, you probably shouldn't care. You should be heavily weighted in equities and you should ride out all the ups and downs and sometimes the roller coasters. And that's what most folks will say, go buy an index fund and you don't even need us. The reality is, what I have learned over 20 years, and in particular over the last five years, is reality doesn't necessarily match what I've just described because people do not often like to see their portfolios drop 18% over the course of a few Months, or like what happened in March or April of this year. Also maybe 15 or some odd percent overnight. You know, when you work really hard your whole life and you build an asset base and this is what you're going to live off of or you want to pass to your kids or others, it can be unnerving to see that happen. And so we have. What we do is we try to find again, that mix of strategies that I've explained. We try to find strategies that have exhibited reasonably nice returns. That's not a defined term, but if you get what I'm saying, we're looking for strong returns, but with a little bit less of that volatility along the way. So the equities will be volatile. Maybe some of the fixed income we use won't be as volatile. Maybe some of the alternatives, maybe some of the real estate. And if you piece it all together, what we're hoping for is a little bit of a smoother return will not keep up with the S and P when it's up 25%. But I have almost no clients that have ever called me up and said, hey, the S and p is up 25% and you've done fine. But not that it rarely happens.

You know, Brian, I was. I was serving on a hospital investment committee many, many years ago when we felt we need a new manager. And one of the people who wanted to manage was a guy named Eric Sprott.

Yeah.

No, And Sprott's sort of an investment genius forever, but hugely volatile. Way up and down, up and down. But very strong over the years.

Right.

And the other contender was sort of more pedestrian, but not Suvalto. So they said, well, so going around the table, who do you like? I said, well, I like Sprout.

Look at those.

Long term, I was the only one.

Right, right.

And I've learned this. So many people, all they want is 6 or 7 and 8 and not to go down too much.

Correct.

And they could give a shit if Marco's up 8,000 points.

Correct. Yeah, correct.

So simple. But, Brian, you do something other than this, right? What's his second business?

You're talking separate from the investing piece specifically. Yeah. So we say, you know, we say we're a holistic wealth management firm because I don't like to say that we're a family office or a multi family office. Why don't I like to say it? Just because I'm not sure. I'm still scarred, back from my Northwood days when no one knew what we were talking about. But we run a multi family office service, which is basically a personal CFO for wealthy families. And some folks have asked me, okay, well what does that mean? What do you do? And the simplest way to answer it, which is also the most unclear way, is to say we help families with whatever touches them financially. What does that mean? And it could encompass everything. And every family is a little bit different. So that's the service. Holistic oversight of their financial affairs, consolidated view and reporting of their investments no matter where they are. As I mentioned before, tax planning, estate planning, insurance work. We've helped families get art appraised at their house. We've helped families find personal chefs. One thing we've been doing lately, unfortunately, but we think we really help is some families as they go through a divorce type of process. There's usually one of the spouses who isn't the sort of key financial person in the family. We work really well with that person.

So, Brian, in this particular business.

Tough interviewer, just cut me off.

Are you, are you very often the investment manager or in most of the cases you're the back office? Let somebody else be the investment department.

Yeah, I would say the answer is sometimes we are, sometimes we are fully the investment manager. 100%. That's rare, especially for the larger families we deal with. Sometimes we are partially the investment manager. I would say that's very common, usually filling in the gaps for what their other investments don't have because we can bring everything to the table. And yeah, we have a few clients where we don't manage a penny and we act as, as I say, this personal CFO oversight. But we sit on their side of the table, meeting with their other managers, putting the portfolios together in a consolidated way. Because unfortunately, what happens a lot of times our clients will say, oh, it's good. I've got someone at bank A and someone at bank B. And you know, so, you know, it's great. Got some diversification. Well, we pull it together for the first time and we go, you know that there's 25% overlap in these things.

In the traditional or your old fashioned investment business, you charge as a percent of assets, right?

Correct. Yeah.

How do you charge in this family office business?

Yeah. So I would say two ways. I would say it depends. And it's two ways. On the investing side, everyone pays the same. There's a, you know, percentage of assets fee, and there's also a potential performance element which is also actually a little bit rare for investment advisors as opposed to investment managers. But our structure really is has the goal of aligning us with our. With our clients and our families. So on the investing side, everyone pays the same. On the family office side, we will introduce a retainer type of fee in the situations where the families don't have a, you know, let's call it a significant amount of assets. With us, if they do, we just roll it into the overarching asset fee. So it's not a fully clear and direct answer to your question because. Sort of depends. But it's either within the investments with a retainer or sometimes both put together. It all depends on the. On the scope of work, to be honest. As I say, every family is different, and it's a lot of work.

I mean, would you say you charge like an accounting firm would charge?

We. Well, accounting firm or law firms, they're generally by the hour, and. And we have never done that. And I'm trying desperately not to get into that world at all, which has some pros and cons, by the way. But the most important pro from the client perspective is I never, ever, ever want our clients to, you know, hesitate to call us on something or, you know, with all due respect to my lawyers and accountants, when I call them up, I say, well, Ira, quick thing. Five minutes. Just five minutes. Because every second is a charge, basically. And so I never want that at all with our families. So I'd rather do either the fees on the assets, if they're sufficient enough, or the retainer, where there's no more cost if you use this more. There's no more cost if you use this less. Although I've not yet found a client who uses us less than what they pay. So we're not. We're not there at this moment, and I really don't want to start counting the hours for our clients.

Yeah, but remember, you're not in the charity business.

No.

Yeah. I've 100% convinced that so many people. I have a friend of mine, he's got a condo, you know, and just north of Palm beach, and he gets a letter from town, Elizabeth. And saying he hasn't paid his taxes in two years and they're taking away from him.

Right.

And this guy, you know, a classic entrepreneur, he doesn't have anybody he can assign coordinating it.

Yeah.

And, like, there's a thousand things like this.

Yeah.

Like, if I. Let's say my wife went on strike. I want to buy a new car.

Right.

I want to buy a car for my grandchildren.

Right. Why.

Why am I doing it? Like, I don't know nothing about cars.

Right.

You can assign people. That's all they want is somebody who's honest and smart. But you see, it is different from investments where, you know, like you say, we're. We like to be diversified. We don't claim we can know anything about the markets. But people do want to think you're smart. You know, the budget just either came out in the last hour. It's about to come out.

Yeah.

And I'll say, hey, what does this budget mean for me? And, gee, there's only been out for four minutes, and I've been watching the ballgame. You think you want to in the service business. You're just smart enough to be in the business, and you're just giving. You're doing the service. You're finding they don't want to be in the same room as tax advisors.

Right.

They want you to be in the room. Correct.

And we are. Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, how are you.

How do people know that you're in this business?

Well, that's the magic trick. To grow, I guess. You know what? I will say we were talking about the family office service before. The pluses, the minuses, the pros, the cons, I'd say. And you said you're not in the charity business, which I think is you suggesting. Make sure you're charging appropriately for the service. And I will say we're probably undercharging a little bit, as I've alluded to. Hopefully my clients agree. But I will say, how do they find out about us in particular, the family office clients, including our investment clients as well. But the family office clients in particular are the biggest generator of new business for our firm, because once they experience what we do for them, they tell their friends or they recognize when their friends need sort of the help that you've just described. And it's. That's where the word of what we're doing spreads a little bit. I hope this podcast helps a little bit. But as you say, I haven't really talked about what we do here in the past. It's really existing clients that are happy. Oh, and by the way, speaking of the family office and clients don't want to talk to their accountants, but we do, et cetera. We don't just talk to the accountants. We give the accountants everything they need on a silver platter with. When it comes time for tax time or they have any query, because we have everything or we gather everything. You know, we need all the realized income reports and the capital gains. We give it all to the accountants on a silver platter. And then they realize, hey, maybe if we send our clients to this firm, we can get everything on the silver platter. And so it's the clients, it's some of the professionals and accountants and lawyers, et cetera, that we work with. That's really where the word about what we're doing is coming from, I think far less so than sort of traditional marketing or other type of efforts.

I learned from, you know, my partner, Gerald Sheffield. He'd never been in the investment business.

Right.

And he believed in high fees. And high fees did work for us for a long time. But you have to have superior investment results forever to sustain those high fees.

Right.

And it's a lot easier to lower fees than it is to raise fees.

That is true. Yeah.

And sooner you raise your fees.

Right.

The better off you'll be because you do have a. A unique service. And it's only a matter of convincing. You know, you're not even convinced, you're explaining it to them.

Right.

And it's this type of service, gee, well, I'm only 72, I don't need it. I'm still hard working. I can do everything. But when I'm 79, maybe I don't want to do it so much or.

Not to be morbid about things, but sometimes people disappear sooner than they expect to disappear. And with our service, again, we're the go to. We have all the information. We know exactly where the accounts are, where the bank accounts are, everything. We know our client's net worth and all their details, literally down to the penny. And just back to your discussion on fees and costs and whatnot. The other thing that our service allows, I was talking about, you know, handing everything to the accountants on the silver platter or whatever. When we do that, that means the accountant is probably doing a few hours less work. Well, they charge by the hour, as we've already discussed. So actually having us in the picture. Yeah, you're paying us, but you're, I would say, almost certainly saving some other professional costs with us in the picture.

Well, do the clients worry they're paying a double fee? Like, say I'm a client and I'm contemplating leaving Canada, but I don't really know anything about anywhere.

Right.

So I, I come to you for your advice. You're leading me to some high class law firm or accounting firm.

Yeah, I think it's two different services. I think folks are coming to us because we have a ton of experience across a whole variety of topics and issues that they have never even had to consider. And we know the right experts to, we think the right experts to reach out to for the various issues or topics or concerns that they have. And then we help coordinate and manage that entire process so they don't have to. And as I alluded to before, to keep it more efficient, maybe more cost effective. So yeah, there's two in that situation. There's for sure two different fees being paid. One to the, let's call it the tax lawyer and one to us as their overall advisor, family, office manager, etc. But they are, but they're two different services, I would say, and we haven't had any issues whatsoever with clients concerned about that. The issue of fees comes up, frankly, more on the investment management side because the media and everyone has, and rightfully so, actually explained how much you want to lower your investment management fees and this and that. That's where we have to explain a little bit more about what we do in the picture. And you know, if you want to do it yourself and pay nothing, that's certainly an option. If you want to have expertise, you know, there's a cost that comes with it. But we think the outcome net of all fees is in the client's best interest.

So when you're dealing with clients, you're guiding them, you know, with things like taxes. Do they have to come to the meeting?

I would say that depends what stage of the project or issue that we're trying to solve is. We spend a lot of time without the client talking to their tax advisors or actually talking to just some of our network. If we're trying to come up with solutions before we really move forward again, that's part of the benefit. They actually get to sit out the boring. For them, we love it. But for them, the boring tax discussions and explaining the whole thing and all that. So yeah, I would say a good portion of the time we're doing that work behind the scenes and then we report back to the client and let them know what's going on.

You should emphasize, you know, because they're, I've seen, you know, service providers, but they insist the client be kept up and listened to and pay attention to. And the client doesn't want to.

That's right. We always say we're here to do work so you can enjoy your life. Basically, that's what we're trying to deliver.

So tell me another thing. When you're dealing with service providers, are you trying to deal with giant firms at banking charging $1,000 an hour? Are you trying to deal with medium sized firms charging $600 an hour or trying to deal with young emerging. Brian gensler. It's right, $300.

We're not $300 an hour. But no, we. It's pretty rare. Like again, our client base, 100% are individuals, private clients, as the industry may call them, entrepreneurs, etc. We're not dealing with big institutions. I don't think we've ever really dealt with one of these huge professional firms downtown. Although actually some of the accounting firms now have groups specialized for the entrepreneur private client space, which are very good. So don't get me wrong, but I would say most of the professionals we're dealing with are sort of the mid market firms that are actually geared to and tailor their services to entrepreneurs and business owners. That's generally where wealth is created. From what, you know, a client base that we see we're trying to match. You know, we're always trying to match the professional that would make the most sense for the client. And obviously cost is a big piece of it as well.

Do you know that when Jeff and I went into business in 1984, do you know how many family officers there were in all of Canada?

Zero. No single family offices or.

Yeah, I don't know, maybe three.

Right, okay, so I was close at zero.

And it has dramatically accelerated. And I was once giving a speech on how big you have to be.

Right.

To have your own family office.

Right. And what's the number as far as you're concerned?

Well, the interesting thing is that there's all sorts of. We'll call them wealthy people and really what they do is manage their own money.

Right.

But if I said to them, hey, do you know, you realize you're a family office? The guy would say, me, I'm just a single person and I don't want anybody in the block to know they're worth $38 million. And I should say, you got a family office. Oh my God, you're a big shot.

Right.

And when I was talking about this idea of the family office, I really didn't think much about. We'll call it the back office.

Right.

And even now, you know, chef and I created this family office about 15 years ago. We might have 15 people. I don't know what they do. I never paid attention.

Right.

And I always underestimated the amount of work required. And yep, I could predict that you will have some serious competitors, but the business will be nine times bigger.

Yeah, look, there's other folks doing what we're doing out there for sure. We were not the first. We won't be the last. We're not the biggest. I think we're the best from my perspective. But we're probably not the best because you know, you can't really say that. But I agree with you. There is, there are a lot of people that could use our help, that could use some of our competitors help and I hope they find the right fit if they are looking at other folks out there other than us. But I can tell you, I do know that the days I go home feeling the greatest or when clients give us nice feedback and say thank you so much, you really helped us. That's the whole point of why I started the firm four and a bit years ago.

Are you the whole firm or do you have any hard working knowledgeable people?

Yeah, I'm not the whole firm. Day one I was the whole firm. But that only lasted a month or two before I hired someone. No, look, we're, I would say we are a boutique, really client focused, client service focused firm. We've got six people in total right now. A couple portfolio managers that work with me on the portfolio side. We've got a family office advisor that works with me and the team looking after families. We have an operations client service associate, we call them operations role. We have a, what I call a client relations coordinator that's sort of moving all that information around between the client and us and external parties and whatnot. So we've got a, I call it the strong and mighty team over here and growing.

Have you ever heard of this word artificial artificial intelligence?

How do you think it's. I've never heard of this before.

How do you think it's gonna affect both these businesses you're in?

I mean, so first of all, we are all, jokes aside, we are paying lots of attention to AI. We've been paying attention to AI long before the rest of the world got all hyped up with AI. Although I do think the hype is real, by the way. We've been investing in what we think is the best AI focused venture capital firm in the world for the last three, four years. So we have seen, you know, AI coming and we know, we believe it's real and will have a significant impact on our business and every business. To be honest. Our every Monday morning I have a team meeting with the whole team. And for the last almost year, always without exception, item number one on that team meeting agenda is AI. What are we doing with AI? What are we learning about AI? What did you do last week? Using some of the technical tools we have we have two or three different AI tools that we use and it is already making a big difference in how we do our business over here. And we're constantly looking to see how to integrate it more because as I say to my team, if we're not ahead of this now, we're going to be, you know, or another way of phrase it is, if other firms are not doing and focusing on thinking about AI now, they're already behind. You've got to be out in of front front of it. So we are trying to use it. We are using it. And I think both for our business, for the world, and actually for some of the investing we do, we think about it a lot as well.

But I mean, is there a tangible example if I'm a client, that I'm.

Benefiting from your knowledge, from how we're using the tools? Yeah, well, so first of all, I mean, we use it to review, in summary, you know, like a lot of folks are, are doing, I hope, and I assume to review and summarize documents all the time. Simple, tangible example. We had a client who had a will. We needed to update their will. We coordinated that whole process with their external estate lawyer, lawyer produced the draft of the will and we put them both up into the AI tool that we use, lockdown, not our information shared to the outside world, and said, compare these two. Explain to us what's covered, what's the difference, what are, you know, create a flowchart of the whole thing and in 30 seconds we read the whole thing as well. But we use AI as a supplement. In 30 seconds it identified that one thing that was in the first will that was supposed to carry on, carry forward was not captured, you know, and you want and expect the client to review all this themselves. But as you say, Maybe reading a 42 page will is just not, not something you want to do even though it's yours. And they rely on us. So we use the tool to identify differences, identify something was missing and, you know, have it updated. So that's just one example. We're using it a lot more than that. But you're putting me on the spot. And that's what's coming to mind right now.

Yeah. Do you deal with banks in what way anyway?

Yeah, well, so a couple different ways, I would say. First of all, our. Any assets that our clients entrust us with is actually custody to the bank. You know, we're not touching anybody's money. It's the Bernie Madoff thing. You want to make sure that, you know, we don't actually touch your money. You can log in and see your, your money at the bank. That custody is it for you. That's number one. Number two, we do look at some of the banks investment products because again we can invest in anything. And while any bank has hundreds and hundreds of various funds to choose from, once in a while we actually find one out of the hundred. The needle in the haystack that they actually are really good at, the other stuff we're not going to use. So we have invested in some cases in a bank sponsored or managed fund. The other way we deal with the banks is again back to the family office services on behalf of our families. You know, we help them think about how they're going to move money and from where and what bills need to be paid and not miss the property tax on the property that like your friend as you mentioned. And we, we don't have any control or authority to on purpose to direct a bank to move a client's money from one place to another. I don't want to have that responsibility because that is maybe a conflict but more so risk of sending money to the wrong place. But what we'll do is we'll set it up, we'll tell the client exactly what they should tell their bankers. Sometimes explain it to the bankers with the client on CC to then provide the approval. It would just take the work off the client. It all comes back to just taking the work off the clients basically.

So you know our family office, we deal with two giant banks and you know, we're not doing anything nefarious but like money's going into the foundation, out of the foundation, paying bills, you know, regular transaction. And I got really quality people in the family office doing that.

Yeah.

The bank insists on checking with me.

Correct. Yeah.

I would do anything.

Yeah. To not have that.

I have this guilt because the bank calls.

Right.

But I'm playing golf.

Right, Right. Yeah. On that front I would say unfortunately for you we would still. I mean the bank requires it and we like that. We like it that we know that at the end of the day you know exactly what we have essentially if we're going to be involved, told the bank to do. But we still want them to check with you because it's your money and you have to approve it to make sure that everything's fine. So that's one thing I can't take off your, your plate.

Do you ever spend a dime on advertising?

Not on formal advertising at all. We like to sponsor some charitable causes once in a while. Which puts our name somewhere. But that's really mostly for charity and to support our clients. No, we don't really spend money on advertising in any material way.

I'll give you one story. We knew this entrepreneur. There's actually a famous Jewish guy, Joe Labava. He's one of the richest guys in the whole Jewish community. And he was a big real estate guy. And my partner Gerald, he promoted Joe. And Joe would come to lunch and one day I said to him, hey, Joe, how come you're not a client? And Joe said, oh, if my friends in business discovered I, the great Joel Babook, had to delegate to somebody else to manage my money, I would be in disgrace. And, you know, I'm sure I said to myself, but hopefully not out loud, that's a dumbest thing I ever heard in my life. You know, in the United States, the smartest business people outsource their money management.

Yeah.

And I want to say, hey, Joe, do you do your own dentistry?

Right, right. Yeah. And it's a good, it's a good analogy. You know, there's lots of do it yourself folks out there on the investing side, maybe running this sort of family office internally. But you can free up a lot of your life and a lot of your time and actually de risk your personal situation if you disappear or your wife disappears or somebody disappears. It's nice to know that everything's organized and in one place. And so we are big proponents of that for sure.

So, Brian, we covered a lot. You think there's something about your firm that I'd ask you about?

I think you've covered a lot. We've gone from A to Z here. That's why you're such a well known. Your reputation as an interviewer is true. I think we've done. You've done a great job here. I hope I've done an okay job answering your questions. Thank you, Ira. Really, really appreciate you being here. Thanks for interviewing slash interrogating me here under the. Under the light. Really appreciate, as I said, you got a good story. Appreciate it. And I'm sure we'll talk to you again soon. Or you'll talk to. You'll interview me again soon. Maybe. We'll see.

Yeah, well, we're gonna be too big to be interview.

Thank you, Ira. You're the best. Appreciate. The unlimited podcast is hosted and produced by Brian Ginsler and is not to be taken as investment advice. If you like what you heard, don't forget to rate the podcast and follow us on social media at Gensler Wealth. Thanks for listening and see you next time.

The international head off.

It is the head off. Did you see the nice logo? The nice. Let me show you. Did you see that very Glescus chef lake. I've been dreaming about this for 20 years. Since we got the nice one at Bay Adelaide and I got it. So there you go.

Thought it was Gulf from Western.