And welcome everyone to another Smart Money Circle episode.
I'm Adam Sarhan. With me today is Stan Gregor,
who's the Chairman and CEO of Summit Financial with
approximately 26 or 27 billion in AUM, depending on how you
want to count it. But Stan, thank you so much for
taking the time and welcome to the Smart Money Circle.
Thank you, Adam. Thanks for having us.
Pleasure. So Stan, I always like to begin.
Can you please tell us your story and how you got to where
you are? Today.
Great well, I, I grew up in a middle class family that worked
very hard for everything that we had.
And one of the things I learned in college as I was studying
finance and technology was the importance of having trusted,
it's called trusted advisors, helping clients guide their path
for the future and, and financial services.
So it was something I was interested in.
That's how I got into this profession and started learning
about the business. And when I finally got licensed
and registered for this industry, I took it seriously.
Helping people that maybe didn't have the knowledge around how to
manage their finances and making a difference to helping them
save for retirement and college and all that stuff.
So that's how I got here. I love it.
I absolutely love it. It's almost as if you're paying
it forward or going back in time.
When you were younger, you looked up at the people in your
world, 'cause I felt the same way.
As a very similar background, I want to help these folks.
How can we do it with financial literacy and financial education
and all that fun stuff? Is that?
Yeah. It's exactly it.
Yeah, it's, it's, it's it's very rewarding, right, Helping people
make those decisions. Yes, I agree 100.
Percent, I totally can relate and agree and and have a similar
path. All right, next question for you
Stan, what is your business? Tell us your company story, what
you do, investment strategy, anywhere you want to go, please,
Competitive advantages, anything you want.
That's a great question. So Adam, it it kind of continues
on the path that I started with helping individuals.
Summit is a 43 year Old Firm. It was started with the core
belief around a multi family office service model started by
a group of advisors, as I said back in the early 80s.
And and their primary goal was to service their clients and
really provide upper upper end financial planning tools and
services. And it's really what piqued our
interest about nine years ago when we looked at some of it as
an investment and as a partnership.
From my standpoint, some of the tools and resources and
structure aligned with my core beliefs, client coming first,
which was which is a big, big piece, a firm that had almost no
turnover right in employees and advisors, which I think speaks
volumes of of the core business and a family culture.
It was, it was a partnership, which is different from a lot of
firms out there where you just a number an employee and you know,
they make changes without your guidance and advice.
So it's what attracted me to the organization.
And I look back now what 4043 years later, you know, we'll
probably approach $30 billion of of assets that we oversee this
quarter. We're in so many different
states across the country. I'm not even sure with the with
with account is today. But there's a consistency is a
theme here of providing some of the highest end services into
multi family office service approach to advisor.
So they can service their clients better and they can go
deeper and broader. And they truly can be that that
advocate for the client when it comes to financial decisions and
watching over their wealth and their family and and guiding
them for the future. So it's a quick summary.
I absolutely love it. Thank you for that.
Let's talk about risk management.
What do you how do you handle risk and what are some mistakes
you see people make with respect to risk management?
Oh my God, it's, it's, it's one of the most important things in,
in managing money, right? It's, it's always easy to play
it red or black, right? But the consequences are not
always enjoyable. It.
So risk is something that we look at not just in managing
money, but really how we manage your organization.
So the number one piece we look at is risk with employees and
partners, right? So if we're doing the right
thing for those individuals and we're giving them the support,
the tools, the guidance that translates now to their clients.
So you know, keeping that balance at the top of the house,
we thought it was critical to get to the front end client
component. And then when we look at how we
manage solutions and how we look at decision making when it comes
to managing risk of assets, we have a significantly high
payroll of what I consider some of the most accredited, smartest
people in our industry. And that is their job to make
sure they are always scanning for what we have today on our
chassis versus what else is is out there and correlating.
If we do take on new positions or we we do make new investments
and new recommendations, how does that compare to the risk
the client, the end client is willing to take and not take?
So it is one of those things that is constantly spinning like
on your computer when on your, you know when you going from
screen to screen and sometimes you get that delay.
We are constantly in that risk mitigation function as a
company. And then most recently,
obviously with all the technology out there, cyber
plays a huge role. And we, we invest significant
time, money and resources and having the right cyber
protections in place, protecting client information, protecting
integrity and data. So it's not just risk when it
comes to managing money, it's all the layers I just mentioned.
It's it's, it's holistic, holistic risk management.
Absolutely love it. So you're not just looking at
one level of risk, it's multi layered or holistic and you're
looking at different angles and then mitigating that risk as
much as possible. Is that correct?
Absolutely yes. Love it.
OK, next question. Yeah, beautiful.
Next question for you, Stan. Let's talk about timeless
lessons you've learned along the way that you'd like to share
with the audience, please. You can go any direction you
want, business, life, relationships, anywhere you
want. Well, I've said this my whole
career, who you partner with matters, right?
So business, relationships, friends, it's critical.
So that that's, that's the foundation.
But with that said, I, I think if you listen, you learn, right?
I've, I've made a lot of mistakes and I've seen other
leaders make mistakes where they feel and believe they know it
all. So they don't listen.
And I, I think that's a, that's a great mistake you'll make.
So I think you'll learn as much in listening as you do in, in,
in, in reading or preaching. So my advice to anybody is just
listen, be, listen to the surroundings, listen to what's
around you. You always can make the
assessment yay and nay, but listening I think is a key key
attribute to any strong leadership position or any any
decision in life. Just be aware of what's around
you and just be open to new ideas.
Yeah, I love that we have two ears and one mouth for a reason,
right? So.
Yes, good analogy. Great analogy.
Thank you. I that's what I do on my show.
I listen, I always ask the questions and I'm quiet.
So I, I love what you're saying here.
So let's talk about the flip side of that.
What are some timeless mistakes either you've learned or you
other you've OK, let me ask you a question again.
What are some timeless mistakes that you've seen other people
make, you've made? How do you learn from them so
you don't repeat them? Yeah, so that's a great question
as well. I I would say I'll speak for
myself. Some of the biggest mistakes
I've made is not having the courage to push back when I knew
something was not the right thing to to do what to roll out
that. Having the courage, I think is
critical. So if if you and your heart
truly believe something is better than what you're Speaking
of or introducing, have the courage and the confidence to do
that. With that said, it's hard to do
that in big organizations where you just a number and you're
afraid maybe for your job and what, you know, speaking out may
do to your career. So that that's been a challenge.
But I think as you get older and you get more resilient and you
get more confident in in maybe maybe knowledge or skill set
that that courage goes up. And I think I'm at a point now
where, yeah, I've been doing this for almost 40 years now.
And I think I've made a lot of mistakes.
I've made a lot of great decisions.
But I do have the courage now to, you know, be truthful with
with myself of what feels good in my soul and what the what
does not. Yeah, I love that.
OK, thank you for that. Next question for you,
leadership as a leader of a almost $30 billion money
management firm and you built it.
So let's talk about leadership. What makes a great leader?
What are some lessons you've learned about leadership that
you want to share with the audience?
Anywhere you want to go, please. Yeah.
Well, there's so many great leaders out there and I always
try to evaluate and, and learn from some of the folks that have
just, you know, just crushed it. So to say, just, you know, blaze
the trail that may be unique and different, But one, one common
thing thing that I see on the leadership side is I've never
met a leader or an entrepreneur that's not excited about a new,
a new venture, Right. And, and with that, you know,
one of my, one of my former mentors was critical in pointing
out saying everybody out there rolls out a business model with
the letter C in in their mind. And I want you to think about
the letter O and a difference between that letter C&O, that
little extra line that turns AC into an O is what I believe
makes the great leaders, right? It's, it's thinking of the what
if and what else didn't I think of?
And, and how is, is there a better way to do this or, or to
your point before, what are the risks of maybe not thinking
about that extra line from the C to the O?
So to me, I, I just try to do that in my everyday life when it
comes to leadership or business or personal, it's trying to
complete that circle, making sure it is a true O factor.
And I I did the complete circle versus 3/4 of a circle.
Yeah, I love that. So what you're saying for the
audience is to follow along the letter C?
It's not a full circle, but there's a little missing.
If you make that little line, it'll become an O.
So I guess it worded another way would be everyone has strengths,
weaknesses. We also have blind spots.
Maybe that line would be the blind spots.
Is that a good way of explaining it and find them and address
them? It is and, and, and in most
cases, it's what you didn't plan on happening, right.
So, you know, pick a business, you know, a restaurant business,
you know, you're going to predict all these sales every
single day. You can pay your rent.
Well, if you're in Chicago and New York and there's a snowstorm
for a week, did you plan for that?
And do you have enough money in the account to get you through
those couple days of that week and whatnot?
So those, that little line there is, is all the contingency
things that can go wrong. And, and when you, when you
evaluate and really think about those things and you go back to
your business model and if it still holds, holds to, to the
truth and to the value, I think you got a strong probability,
but being successful. And you know, when you think
about those risks. So the exciting thing is it
being successful, The exciting thing is it working out, but you
also have to balance it out with the what if can happen.
And I, I think it's a critical piece of leadership in, in any
business. Yeah, I totally agree.
OK, wonderful. Next question for you.
Being successful, you handle adversity different than most
folks and overcome some obstacles.
So how do you handle adversity and what are some obstacles you
had to overcome along the way? Well, I'll start off with this.
Winning is hard, right? I mean, we had the Super Bowl
last night and you saw, you know, 2 great teams go into it,
but but it was hard, right? And one team, one team, one.
It's the same in everything in life.
The easiest thing the entire population can do is quit,
right? That is very easy.
Anybody can do that. But winning is is a challenge.
It takes grit, it takes adversity.
You can't quit. You got to figure out how to get
it done. I think that's in, in anything
in life, right? We we get, we get tossed
curveballs every single day in life.
And it's how you handle them and the mental set, you know, the
mental set that you have on every single day and how you get
through that I think defines you as a person and you as as a
winner versus, you know, ordinary.
Yeah, fully agree. I, I love that.
OK, it's so easy to quit. And then just I, I call it
popcorn brain. Well, it's not my word, but
someone else calls a popcorn brain where the brain goes Ding,
Ding, Ding, Ding, Ding, Ding, neck, shiny object, nut, shiny
object, you know, from investing.
They call it style drift in the institutional world where I'm a
value investor today, but tomorrow my growth investor,
then breakout trader, then this and that, and then just keep
jumping back and forth. And they don't give that seed.
They plant the seed, They don't give it time to grow.
So I love what you're saying here.
So all right, next question for you and final question for you
today is what is the best piece of advice Stanley, you'd like to
give the audience or your 30 year old self?
Great question. Best piece of advice is have
have the courage which I said earlier in in in your beliefs.
Have a real concrete plan that can go from beginning to end.
And execution is, is everything, right?
Talking about it, dreaming about it, writing it on a whiteboard.
That's nice. Those are nice to do, but but
execution is everything. And, and how you execute and do
you execute is, is critical. So success is predicate on that.
And you want to bring sports in, you want to bring business, you
want to bring relationship. It's it's the execution piece
that is that finishes everything off.
Absolutely love it. Well, Stan, Congrats on your
success. Thank you for coming on the show
and hopefully we'll have you on again soon.
Thank you, Adam. Thank you.
Have a great day.