Why I Invest My Family's Money Alongside My Clients

Brendan Holt Dunn: Is the money for an elderly widow to live off of, or is it for their grandchildren? Those are gonna be two completely different portfolios, right? One's gonna be more fixed income, provider income, so she's not dipping into the capital. Or one might be very more targeted to growth, right? So

Sean Weisbrot: welcome back to another episode of The Wheel of To Build podcast. I'm here today with Brendan Holt Dunn. He is the CEO of Holden and managing partner of Holt Accelerator. It's a fifth generation family business, which offers family office services, wealth management services, trust services, corporate services, concierge services, and financial services. They are based in The Bahamas and I have not been there in about 25 years. So hopefully it is, uh, still worth going to because when I went I don't really remember my experience at all actually 'cause I was too young. So, uh, why don't you tell everyone a little bit more about yourself and how you got into this and uh, we'll go from there.

Brendan Holt Dunn: Well, great. And thank you Sean. I appreciate you having me on the call. I guess about myself or you wanna gimme kind? You want me to dive into the background of the whole family? What's best for you?

Sean Weisbrot: Go for it. The whole family. Let's, let's see who they are.

Brendan Holt Dunn: We're a fifth generation family office that was started by my great-great-grandfather, sir Herbert Holt, who immigrated from Ireland to Canada. Ended up just outside of Quebec City on Eil Oral, so Islands of Orleans. Um, and ended up being very successful. He controlled over 300 businesses around the world. Normally I speak to non Canadians for, so for non Canadians, what you would know is longest serving president and chairman of the Royal Bank of Canada for 35 years. CP Rail, which is still today's largest rail company in Canada, uh, and Montreal, light heat and power, which you wouldn't know about, but it was one of the largest energy producers in North America. But that was nationalized in the, I believe, the 1930s and exists today as hydro Quebec and provides about 4 billion in annual profit to the Quebec government Now. We were a single family office for four generations. We're now a multifamily office, so we manage our family's assets alongside others, be it high net, high net worth individuals, other families or charitable organizations like endowments or foundations. We have offices, uh, in Montreal where we're originally from. Miami Bahamas. I'm based in Cayman Islands, and, and what we do is build discretionary portfolios on a segregated basis, meaning we don't pool client capital together. Uh, and we build customized portfolios for each client based on their own unique circumstances. Risk tolerance, and time horizon. Our goal has always been on generational wealth management, how to ensure that we're providing the best portfolio for the next generation or the generation after that.

Sean Weisbrot: What's the benefit for someone to choose to work with a company like yours?

Brendan Holt Dunn: Yeah, the overall, it's a good question. Overall, the main difference between what would be a multifamily office is obviously 'cause we're managing other people's money, not ourselves, versus what might be labeled as an institution. Uh, sorry, independent asset management firm or a bank, right? Those are the kind of the three options you can do. The biggest difference with a multifamily office is. As our office, we act as the anchor client. So if I'm, I believe in your portfolio, we should be you. X number of share of Apple. You have comfort knowing that our family is gonna have that exposure as well. So we're not just recommending Apple for you for the sake of either taking commissions or hopefully we can get a performance fee. It's really what we believe is the best interest for our portfolio, for our, our, you know, maintaining and growing our wealth. And if we're doing that for ourselves, we're gonna do it for our clients. So that's really where the alignment of interest comes in, that we're doing this together. Most independent asset management firms, you know, they might be managing a lot of money, but that money is not theirs. It's just client money. So they might lose 20% on a on a position, and it'll hurt their management fees. It'll hurt their performance fees, but most likely, it usually doesn't have a major impact on that person's individual net worth. But when we're recommending something for you, we're a lot more cautious and very sure what we believe. And you're never gonna bat a thousand, obviously, but we really believe this is the right position in the long run because this is what we're doing for ourselves. So our money's on the line with everything we recommend. For you,

Sean Weisbrot: did you ever really have a choice to not be involved in the family office? Was it something that was kind of planned for you or

Brendan Holt Dunn: no? A hundred percent There was no, there was no, um, forced. Pressure into this. I, I'm the only one really on my generation that's involved. Uh, my brother has nothing to do with it. It's really finding every person's passion and letting them excel at that. So finance is something that I always enjoyed, so it just kind of, I naturally fell into that. There was no pressure. My dad let me, you know, work at other firms to see if I liked it and, you know, just let me free flow around. In terms of trying other opportunities, I interned at various financial firms. I did all that and. But other people in, in my generation didn't, and if they'd done their own things and been very successful,

Sean Weisbrot: I, I guess I was curious about that because I haven't watched the TV show succession, but I think probably people might think about that when they think of these kinds of multi-generational businesses.

Brendan Holt Dunn: Uh, I wish it would be that fun or that stressful, but it's not Right. There, there, there's not the cutthroat kind of, uh, organization, maybe other families ares, but definitely not, not ours. Um, it, there was no pressure. It's really just figuring out who wants to be involved and who fits or who has a value add in that. A lot of, uh, my, my, my brother's a a tax lawyer for the Department of Justice in Canada, and that's what he loves, right? So, uh, the whole goal of a family office is. The family members, right? And, and support them in whatever their passion may lie, because they'll, they're gonna be successful, can't really force people into something, um, like into this job in finance that they don't like. They're gonna hate their life and they're not gonna really add value. It's not gonna do much for anybody. But succession is fun. But that's not our fa, our family office.

Sean Weisbrot: Fair enough. Is there anything that you guys won't touch in terms of investments? I know there's some, uh, I, I, I just recently heard, uh, was it uk There was some government that said they wouldn't buy US bonds because there weren't ESG, I think it was Germany actually. So is there anything that you Yeah. Refuse to invest in and, and kind of what, what's your reasoning for that?

Brendan Holt Dunn: Well, first part, that's a very good question as well. First, we're we're only gonna invest in something that we have knowledge or or understanding of, right? So we don't have any investments in biotech or pharma or anything like that. Simply because we don't have a knowledge or understanding where we are confident we can make that investment for our clients. The mo first and foremost is always making sure that we know and can justify why we're making a specific investment. So if we were ever thought that biotech or pharma, anything like that. A client portfolio, we biotech. We know why we're buying something. I'm not just like throwing darts on the table on on a board, right? So, and then it goes down to after that, is there, are there any ethical or moral reasons behind that? So ESG might be one, et cetera like that. Uh, but the first premise or the first kind of, you know, hurdle is why are we doing this? Can we justify it? Do we believe this is actually a value add the client portfolio. After that, it's like, are there any moral, moral or ethical reasons why we should not be looking at this?

Sean Weisbrot: So are there any things out there that you ethically object to investing in?

Brendan Holt Dunn: Yeah, anything. Well, I guess mo mainly it would be like at ESG, we're starting to do more and more in, we don't have a a, a set framework on it yet. Uh, and again, it also is gonna be depending. Our clients might have moral or ethical things that they don't build a p say, you might say, ethical against or gambling. Therefore, we know for your portfolio, we're not gonna touch anything in those spaces if we even, we. Were to do that, right? So let's say we, we found a, um, something that like, let's say DraftKings or something that was involved in the gaming space and we thought it would make sense for our client portfolios. Then obviously for your portfolio, we wouldn't make that allocation. So the way we work at it is, is basically on a client by client basis. Each person has their own unique views and, and, and values, and it's not us to force our, our ethical beliefs on each individual client. So we, you know, obviously we're not gonna touch anything that we're not understanding, but then on a client by client basis, we're gonna look at what is Sean's, you know, value, values, what is Brendan's values, et cetera, et cetera. And we know on each individual client portfolio what can or cannot go in those portfolios.

Sean Weisbrot: So earlier you had said that you wouldn't recommend something to a client unless it's something that your family was also willing to have exposure in however. There's some clients that you wouldn't ever bring something to, and so let's say you've got 10 different clients and there's 139 different, uh, positions that your family has taken. Mm-hmm. Each of those clients is gonna have some percentage of them, even if they don't, even if they're not all on the same.

Brendan Holt Dunn: Correct. Like if every single person had the exact same risk tolerance. So, you know, in, in, in the normal financial world, as, as you know, you might have people that have growth portfolios, they might have conservative portfolios. It's really depending what the money is for, right? Is the money for an elderly widow to live off of, or is it for their grandchildren? Those are gonna be two completely different portfolios, right? One's gonna be more fixed income, provider income. So she's not dipping into the. Or one might be very more targeted to growth. Right. So going back to your question, yeah. If every single one of our clients had the same growth portfolio, then theoretically they would have all the same exposure unless someone had a a, an ethical or value like hurdle that had to be touched social, for example. In out of Bahamas. Now moving to Cayman, we have, um, a proprietary fund that we built that places bets. It's a mathematical algorithm that pace places, bets on soccer matches around the world, or more credit, more correct football matches. Uh, but that is, even though it's math driven, it's quant, it's ai, it's it's financially driven. It is still in the gaming space. So we do have a few clients, even though the returns are amazing. We understand that they would not be comfortable having that exposure or that investment because it's in the gambling space and they're just against that. So let's say Sean and Brendan had the same growth portfolio, and of those overall portfolios, the, the, the football fund should be of that allocation and Sean is against gambling. Sean, you would not get that allocation because of the beliefs. And we, you know, obviously we're honor and respects individual beliefs.

Sean Weisbrot: So you were just talking about, uh. Incredible returns. I, I'm not quite sure on like what the s and p and these other stock markets, what the average returns are per year or anything like that, but obviously people come to you and other companies like yours because you are going to hopefully give them returns that are beyond what, just putting money in the stock market by itself can do. Do you have an example of like what an average return across the portfolio looks like?

Brendan Holt Dunn: Not an average on every portfolio, 'cause every portfolio is different. I know obviously what each individual product has done. So if you look on our foundation, what we think is the core expertise that we developed and then we've grown from there is on the US and Canadian equity markets, you know, individual stock selection, be it Apple or Royal Bank of Canada or whatever. So we have a track record of, I believe it's 33 or 34 years now of outperforming the the US index. Or the Canadian index. 'cause we keep us portfolio separate from the Canadian because different currencies. But both portfolios have outperformed their market benchmarks by roughly about 2% annualized, but 2% in one year immaterial. Right? But 2% annualized for 33 years is a, if you compound that difference over 33 years, that is a massive difference in growth or, and in, you know, wealth. Um, wealth growth or generation. Uh, so what we've normally done now for, for clients is we use that equity expertise as our foundation to build a client's portfolio, assuming they obviously want your growth exposure, and they're not just pure fixed income, but the, the equity foundation, the equity exposure is the foundation of portfolio. Then we'll add on, you know, any other alternative product that makes sense for their allocation and how to build them the most, you know, the best portfolio possible for their unique needs. So the most efficient portfolio for them, but usually it revolves around, or based upon the starting position, would be those equity exposure. So yes, they, we've done very well. We're never gonna beat them every day or every year. But our whole view, as we mentioned at the beginning, is generational wealth. So over 33 years, you know, this is what we've done over those 32, 33 years is 2% annual, uh, outperformance for 33 years on the equity side.

Sean Weisbrot: So then what about something like this?

Brendan Holt Dunn: Uh, football betting. So it's been very good, and again, we're, we're also very cautious and conservative. It, it has great performance, but it also has some, some not issues. It has a lot, you know, restrictions around it, why you would never put too much money into it. The whole point is making sure you build a diversified portfolio, so it averages around 15 to 22% a year. What's great about it, it's un or correlated. Anything happens in the world, like interest rates go up, we're still doing well, you know, Ukraine more hits, we're still doing well. You know, there's the, the risk of the, you know, it's over now. The US debt default doesn't impact this 'cause people always still gamble. They always still bet. And the most liquid one is I've seen in global football matches. So it's a great exposure to add on to a client's portfolio, but it's nothing that should be the core portion of your core portfolio. That's too big a risk. So we would never do that. So if a client came to us with $10 million, we wouldn't say, throw 8 million into this and just sit back and relax and we'll do a couple million in, in, in equities. It's just, that's a risk level that we would never recommend for a client.

Sean Weisbrot: So if someone wanted to be. Highly risky in with the goal of growth at all costs as fast as possible for let's say a yeah, three year period or five year period, what would you recommend to them?

Brendan Holt Dunn: It'd be tough. We decide whether we wanna take on that client or not, to be honest. Um, you know, if, if it's something that we have internally, like look at our football fund, um, and they say, okay, I, I, I need, I like if they are comfortable. We would never go and recommend that to them. But if they say, I understand the risks, I'm comfortable with it. I want to give you $10 million, and it all goes into the football fund, as long as we document that properly, and that is the risk tolerance they have, and that's what they're hiring us for, we would look at doing that. But if they're expecting us to go and, you know, do a lot of call options or short, or do a lot of. Risky stuff in the stock market to try to hit like a home run. We would not, we would not take on that client, but what we would do is create what we believe is our comfort level for a growth portfolio. And if they want to tweak those exposures within our recommended allocations, we would look at that. So maybe we say, okay for, ooh, you know, extremely risky or not risky, extremely high growth oriented portfolio, maybe 20% of your portfolio could be in our, our football fund. And they say, Hey, listen, I understand that. I, I understand the risks associated to it, but I wanna bump that up to 50%. You know, we would have that discussion if we documented properly. We'd be okay doing that. As long as it's open and honest communication of how that's gonna impact your portfolio, then we could look at that. But if they're telling us to come and do stuff that we're not comfortable with, um, or things that we have no expertise in, then we would probably recommend. Then they go somewhere else.

Sean Weisbrot: Okay. What's the craziest thing you've ever had someone ask you to do?

Brendan Holt Dunn: Honestly, I wish I could tell you stories, but we don't. 'cause you know, the people that come to us are ones that have already made their money, right? So they're not here coming to us to try to be, you know, we're not this top quartile hedge fund that makes, you know, 80% a year type thing and, and down 20% the next year. We're here as the boring, stable Canadian, right? We're conservative wealth managers that over a long period of time we will do well for you. Uh, but people aren't coming to us or attracted to us. Of crazy stuff we can do. So it is boring. We're not succession and we, and we don't have crazy people, you know, crazy asks from our clients because those are not the people that we would've been introduced to in the first place. Sorry, I know it's not, it's exciting, but

Sean Weisbrot: what kinds of technologies are you guys looking at using in order to improve, I guess, the, uh, product offerings or, uh, communication with clients, et cetera?

Brendan Holt Dunn: Yeah, it's a good question. And obviously we're not, you know, tech experts, but we always get pushed or looked at ideas. So, um, there's one technology I'm having a call with later today or tomorrow. They're a family office, you know, technology platform. Uh, don't have enough details on it yet, but I was introduced. It's all introduced to relationships. So someone I work with in Miami goes, this looks like a very good technology for family offices. You should look at it. So I'm gonna dig into it. The answer of what they do right now, I don't know. You're always looking at how to improve any part of your organization, you know, financial accounting. And then, you know, the biggest thing is always client communication. So dig into our CRM, how to make that more efficient, how to make sure we have enough data on our clients so that we can send them the right stuff. Um, I would say that our weakest part is communication, making sure we get better and better in that. So, um, we are working on building more technology or, or ways to ensure that we're, we're communicating automatically on a regular basis rather than to be a manual process, which creates delays.

Sean Weisbrot: I'm glad you said that because I've been thinking a lot about automations recently. A lot of the content I've been putting out, a lot of the people I've been interviewing are building automations into their businesses, or they're building businesses that help other businesses automate. And I've recently invested in an automation agency because I think there's massive potential right now, specifically because everyone wants to be able to use AI in their business. But what they don't realize is that. AI is mostly useful for a business in its operations, and the only way that the AI can be useful in its operations is if you've already built a foundation of automation and integration within your operations so that the AI can pull the data from those different software pieces or different departments, different teams, to be able to create a business intelligence dashboard so that it can then tell you whether your company's efficient and where it's lacking, and therefore how you can improve specific aspects. So. AI is fantastic, but most people don't know how to use it. Agreed. So, okay, so you, you have a number of clients. How do you operate in terms of serving them? Do you have a single person that follows them or do you have one person that follows multiple clients and kind of communicates with them? How does that work?

Brendan Holt Dunn: Yeah, so we would have a handful of relationship managers, right? So each individual person would be, you know, onboarding or bringing their own clients to the business. And then they're obviously responsible for, for handling those 'cause they have the personal relationship. So I'll have my clients that I work with or I see regularly, you know, their friends as well. So, you know, my day-to-day responsibly or anything involving communication to the clients, I would be handling that communication directly to my clients and relationship manager would be handling their handful of clients. We don't get inbound random clients that come in and we just say, allocated. Okay, Sean, you're a relationship manager. You get these five new clients that came in. Everything that comes to us is is word of mouth or referrals. So there is already a personal relationship. It's just depending on where that personal relationship comes from. Does it come from me or comes from one of our relationship managers? So each one is gonna have, what would we say, your own book of business. Obviously there's, there's overall client, I mean, corporate communication that gets sent out to everybody. Uh, but if, if you as a client have a question, your point of contact is gonna be your relationship manager. That could be me, or it could be someone else within the company. And that's, you're gonna say, Hey, hey, Brendan, you know, I got your information. Can we jump on a call? Or, you know what, what we do is we're, we're gonna have quarterly reviews each. I schedule in advance. In the next quarter, I, I have my list of clients that I will have a, a, um, a Zoom call with them and we'll go through their portfolio live and give them all the performance updates, see what's going on with their life, and see if there's any changes that we need to implement within the portfolio, given circumstances that might happen in the last three months. And that's also when we can have any, they can. What's happening with this fund, et et. So each person is kind. All the other clients that I don't handle directly, I have communication with them. They have access to me as well. So I'll jump on a call with, you know, one relationship manager and their clients once in a while just so I can catch up with them personally as well. Our goal is to make sure that we know who all of our clients and we have a personal relationship with them. We would never want to be big and so, so big we're, I don't know who you are, I don't know where you live, I dunno about your family and, and you just feel like you're just a number at a bank. Um, that's not the way we, we, we operate. So every one of the clients that we have currently, I know them all. You know, some I know better, you know, some are my personal clients and some are the rest are my relationship manager's clients. But I do know them. I've had conversations with 'em. Obviously, if any of them are in Bahamas, I meet with them in person. And if we're traveling and, and there's a client in that city, we'll make sure to reach out and meet with them as well.

Sean Weisbrot: No, I, I know that networking is extremely important, especially for people with, uh, high net worths. Because they wanna know other people like themselves. Do you guys ever connect your clients with each other? Uh, some, some of them are. It, it really depends on each individual

Brendan Holt Dunn: client what they want. You know, we, you, you, we know them well. So it's not like I ask them to fill out a form, but we always say discretion first. So I will never disclose to anyone if Sean, if you're my client, unless you gimme approval to do so. So first and foremost, no one's ever gonna know you're my client unless you want them to know. If let's. You're my client and we're going out for dinner with somebody else, so I'm just gonna say, I've got my friend coming with me. And then if you say, oh, I'm Brendan's client at that point, it's an open conversation. I know that the next time we have dinner with that person that he's already aware. But for us, it's, it's driven by the clients, what they want to people to know, what they don't. A lot of people don't want other ones to know that they're our client or how much money we're managing for them. And we'll never disclose even if, if your friend knows that you're my client, I never disclose what your portfolio. Not how much money, how much money I'm managing on your behalf. Um, so it, it is again, a case by case basis, right? Like if you look at Jamaica, we have a bunch of clients in Jamaica. Most likely they know each other. Most likely they are some, one of them referred the next one to us, right? So there's always gonna be that relationship where Sean, you're my client, and then you refer your friend. You're automatically gonna know that that guy's my client. Um, but unless otherwise, you know, we're, we don't disclose unless driven, you know, dis unless directed by the client. So it's discretion first.

Sean Weisbrot: Right? Yeah, that makes sense. Is there a specific minimum that you guys require someone to allocate for you to be willing to take them on?

Brendan Holt Dunn: You know, normal family offices would have a minimum. Just the, the, you know, managing a, a $500,000 client is the same amount of work as a 10 or 15 million client, right? So it is, you know, not economies of scale, it's just the cost associated with. As I said before, we wanna know, we want to know all of our clients are, and we, we believe that we, if, if we don't have a personal relationship and it's not someone I like in terms of we don't get along that, I don't think they should be a client of ours anyway. We're gonna have different views, we're gonna have different beliefs, and most likely if we don't get along personally, then there's gonna be an issue in a business relationship at some point. So we're. We're more concentrating on who the person is and if we believe that we have like a alignment of values and interests, and then the money part, you know, comes after that. So, you know, I do have friends I went to school with that obviously are, are just starting their career, so I'm never gonna say no to them, right? If my friends come to us and say, here's $5, can you help me? I'm always gonna say yes. But if some random person come off the street and says, here's $200,000, it's all I'm gonna ever give you, it really doesn't make sense from a business. So if you're looking at, if it's just an inbound option, we're saying five or 10 million would be a minimum that we'd look at. But then there's the friends, um, and the individual relationships that we have where there really is no minimum, it's my discretion if we say yes or no. Uh, it's, it's, it's the relationship and the value and. That's the key and more key and, and the most important thing at the first, but then after that, you're really looking at five or 10 million is really what you would need for us to have a belief that we could build a, a good portfolio across numerous allocations if that's what they need for their portfolio.

Sean Weisbrot: Okay. So you said that everything's word of mouth. Do you guys do any social media? Do you make any content, anything at all?

Brendan Holt Dunn: Yeah, we're, we're starting to get better at that. I would say we're probably the worst marketers. Um, you know, it's not anything we focused on and don't have an expertise on, but we're, we are working on that. Yeah. We have a LinkedIn, um, follow, no LinkedIn presence. I don't know how many follows we have on it. So we will post now, we post like our weekly market out update and we post some stuff I think quarterly. Um, but other than that, we have not done like a. Push to get clients. Um, obviously we're always looking at rebranding and, and fixing our website and, and increasing our, our client communication. But in terms of like just, um, out marketing outreach, we have never really done that. And we have to look at how that will actually impact or bring value to us. Obviously the, you can always justify, well, it's gonna build your brand, et cetera, et cetera, but do I really believe that I'm going to get an inbound client just because I do a marketing outreach? Not really. Like, it's not, we're not a bank. We're not gonna get people bank. Again, they're gonna know about us regardless if there's a marketing push. So they're gonna get a referral, or it's gonna be word of mouth. Say, oh, I've got this great relationship with Brendan and Holden. You should talk to 'em. Uh, but no one's gonna see some LinkedIn push or, or LinkedIn marketing campaign and say, oh, I, I'm comfortable wanting to give this guy $10 million. Don't think I.

Sean Weisbrot: Yeah, it's probably more useful for, for other businesses that are working at a lower level. Like I use, uh, LinkedIn. I publish these podcasts and clips and all that there. And, um, I've gotten people booking calls with me for my services, but I'm not managing tens of millions of dollars for clients. So it's, it's a different business for sure.

Brendan Holt Dunn: Yeah. But it is good, like building your brand helps overall, right? Just there's a higher chance that as, you know, a cocktail party, people would know who you are. But it's not a direct path to getting new clients. So I do agree. It helps build and promote your who you are, your, your product and whatever. It gets a little bit more, you know, market understanding of you. Uh, so it maybe helps. Close a client later, but I'm never gonna do a LinkedIn push or any social media or marketing campaign and, and think I'm gonna get a new client that way. But I know it's, you still need to do it to get your, your name out there, get more people aware of it, um, and just kind of that helps increase and spread the word of mouth.

Sean Weisbrot: Yeah. What I've learned is, so like I, I did a bunch of stuff when I was in China, but none of it was on the Western social media platforms. China, you know, blocked them all. So, so after I left China, I had to rebuild my career basically from scratch at the age of 31, 32. And what I'm finding now is things are starting to pick up in a way. It's, it's helpful. It's taken a few years 'cause I've gotten only really more serious about it in the last two years or so. It. It's like I've built a brand called We Live to Build basically, and like we live to build is my personal brand, which may be counterintuitive, I dunno. But that brand, no matter what company I'm founding or advising or investing in, that's my brand. People will know that name, they'll know the podcast, they'll know the things that I do. And so it's, it's quite valuable for me because. If I go, Hey, I wanna invest in your company and they don't know who I am, I can go, well look at the, you know, already, you know, this, you're, you're like episode 1 49, basically. So like I've done a ton of interviews with a bunch of people that are running massive companies. I have a face, right? So it's not like I'm just some random guy on the street with some cash. Like people kind of know who I am. So it's quite beneficial in that regard. No, I fully agree and congrats. Thank you. Yeah, 150 episodes over three, almost three years. And, uh, it's definitely not been easy, that's for sure. A lot of podcasts fall apart after like 10, 15 episodes because it's a lot of work and it takes it, there's a long, it is, it's a long lead time to see results. Like some of these guys like Lex Friedman and uh, Steven Bartlett from Diary of a CEO, they've got millions of subscribers, but it took them years to build that. So, yeah, I agree. So is there anything we haven't talked about related to this field that. You feel I really should know about?

Brendan Holt Dunn: No, not, not to cut it short, but No, to be honest, you've, you've asked pretty good questions and, and I wouldn't like try to rack my head, my brain around anything else clients would ask, but pretty much no. The other, most people focus on who you are, who they know. Like you obviously explain the family office and however you done wealth, wealth management wise. The other things is you said we do have other services. Those are, I wouldn't say an. The bread and butter of of a family office usually revolves around managing their assets and then you do things that come around that. As you said, estate planning, that's very important for generational wealth management, can or cannot

Sean Weisbrot: include trust services. So I'm curious. I've been following the blockchain industry since 2015 and I know there's a lot of people out there that are really concerned. You mentioned estate planning. There's a lot of people that are concerned about if they die suddenly they lose access to. You know, the family loses access to all of that crypto. So I was wondering if you had anyone ask you if you could like. Be a custodian for their crypto and make sure that if they die, their family gets it.

Brendan Holt Dunn: Yeah, no, it's a good question. And that is something that's happened in the last 10 years, right? Like you, no one would ever have had those conversations before. You know, we are looking at the crypto industry. We do, as we mentioned at the beginning, haven't touched it. We do have a, our own venture capital fund, the HOL used to be called the HOL Accelerated, rebranded to Holt Exchange. So we're the founders of that. We're not the manager managing partners of it, but they have exposure. Through investments in companies that are in the crypto space. Um, but it is a question that, you know, basically on your estate planning is something how you can do that in the future. So, you know, your, your crypto key and all that. What do you do to protect that, as you said, if they die suddenly, where is that information? How is someone gonna be able to unlock it? Um, that has not happened to us yet, but I, I can envision there's gonna be, or even currently, there's a lot of people. Um, who plan ahead probably be quite stressed about that and how to, how to structure that properly.

Sean Weisbrot: Yeah, it should, it should stress people out because if you have a significant amount of money that's, you know, held as Bitcoin, Ethereum, whatever, or pep Bitcoin, whatever the latest thing is today, you know, you. On one hand, you don't want people to know that you have it 'cause you don't wanna put yourself at physical risk. But you also wanna make sure the people you love can access it. If you die suddenly, but you, but you don't want to, you don't want them to know how to access it while you're alive. 'cause if you tell the wrong person, they could get greedy and steal it. And if you have a, a lawyer who's like. Managing your portfolio or, or, or making sure that people get what they're supposed to get. They could steal the keys and, and screw you over to like, there's so much potential to get screwed.

Brendan Holt Dunn: Yeah. Agreed. Uh, it's a new discussion that people need to have. I don't think there's a, I'm, I'm sure some smart people have come up with a pretty good structure so far. I don't know what that is. It hasn't come to us yet. Right. Technically the same thing could be said about your bank accounts, right? If you say to someone you think you trust your lawyer, here's my username and password. Draw my, my online access to my bank where I have $50 million. Technically they could, if they have the right, you know, you know, security questions, all the information, log in and initiate a wire, whether the bank does a callback or not, it's gonna be the question. But, um, you know, there is theoretically that risk a little bit. I think there's a little bit more hurdles when. $50 million from someone's account. Uh, but yeah, that, that is a, a question that needs to be covered, but whether thankfully or not, that has not come to us yet.

Sean Weisbrot: Have you thought about how AI might revolutionize your industry?

Brendan Holt Dunn: It is a question, right? I forget which bank. Maybe it was JP Morgan or Morgan Stanley, I think someone came out that they're trying to use AI to develop a better like, you know, algorithm obviously for, for stock picking. Not really sure how it's gonna go. Um, you know, banks are obviously motivated on different levels. The more trades that they do, the more commissions they get, et cetera, et cetera. So not really sure if it's ever gonna do great. Um, but at the end of the day, as everyone, as they say, computers are always gonna be smarter, much smarter than us. At some point they're gonna develop something. But I don't think we survive as a family office based solely on your performance. It's really the relationships and the trust and the comfort you give your clients as well. Like they come to us 'cause they know they can sleep at night. We're not gonna do anything stupid. We're not gonna try to risk their money if, if the stock goes down, they know that we're comfortable with it because we still have our money in that. Right? So it's really that we're in this together. Um, I think, and then, and there's someone that you could speak to and, and to relate to, right? We're on the same level in terms of wealth. We're, we're working together and we're trying to, you know, make sure that both of our families have more money and, and could be passed down properly for the next generation. You know, uh, I don't think a computer can ever provide all of that. Maybe there's an allocation that you, you have to a computer generated quant fund. I can always see that working. But in terms of having that personal relationship, I don't think that's ever gonna disappear. Would you, if you had $50 million, would you trust a computer to manage all that for you? Set up your estate, do all that, and basically give it to a computer to control your, what your, your family's wealth. Maybe in the future, but I just can't see that now.

Sean Weisbrot: I mean, I know that there's people that are going to chat, PT and saying, you have, you know, a thousand dollars, obviously it's not 15 to million, 20 million, but you've got a thousand dollars, you know, turn it into a million. Go. Start a business, go and there's people on Twitter and they're saying, okay, Chatt, PT told me to do this. I've done this. This is the result. And they're documenting their journey and I think one of them turned a thousand into 50,000 in like a month. So like. There's, there's some things that are happening. So there

Brendan Holt Dunn: are some for sure. It is just, you know, and again, we're, we're older, right? I don't, I don't know how old you're, but I'm not part of that generation. Um, maybe each generation has more and more trust with it, but I could do that with 10,000 to chat. GT says, okay, take 10 and do that. Here's your life savings and everyone's D value. You know, level of life savings is different, but it's your life savings, whether it's 50 grand or whether it's 50 million. Would you go to a computer and say, here's my life savings. Would you be comfortable doing that?

Sean Weisbrot: Not all of it.

Brendan Holt Dunn: No. Right now I don't. Exactly. And I think that's where we are right now. And I agree maybe in the future, whether it's this generation or four generations from now, you know, maybe you just put your money in some computer driven program and that's fine, but. Right now, I think people at our level still want that personal relationship. They can come to me. We, we can talk, we can socialize. They know we're, we're in this together. And you know, again, we're in the same level playing field. We're, we're, we're successful. They're successful, we understand what's going on. They have someone to talk to, but you can't do that with a computer. And, and, and the clients that we have right now. They're, our generation are above. So we're not working with the, the 20 year olds that just made 10 million in crypto. They're not coming to us 'cause we're, we're conservative and boring. So our clientele, probably not the younger clientele, I think would have a higher level of trust.

Sean Weisbrot: The guys that I know like that, they're like, okay, I made five. I'm gonna turn it into 50. Let's do it again. Like they, they just double down on whatever they do and they put it all in.

Brendan Holt Dunn: Yeah. High risk. Which is great at that age, you have the ability to do that, right? If you're 40, 50, 60, you've got children, you've got grandchildren. It's a different risk level, hopefully, right? Um, but when you're fifties, when you're in your teens or twenties or thirties, you're at that age where you should be taking risk and learning from that. Hopefully, if you've made five, put one aside and then try to risk the four and then do it again. But at some point, all those people are gonna slow down. Hopefully yes,

Sean Weisbrot: hopefully. Well, I mean, you look at Wall Street bets, like that stuff happens all the time. Alright, right. Well, how can people follow up? Uh, I think I, my email's on there. I, I

Brendan Holt Dunn: did the thing, but they, they can always email me or, or find me on LinkedIn and figure it out. But happy to explore further.

Sean Weisbrot: All right, sounds good. Well, don't forget that entrepreneurship is a marathon, not a sprint. So take care of yourself every day. Thank you Brenda.

Brendan Holt Dunn: Appreciate it. Thanks.