Latest / Financial Planner Search / Garden-Glove Service for Family Offices with Jack Dwyer | Financial Planner Search
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- Gregory Wilnau: Hey Jack, how are you doing today? Jack Dwyer: Outstanding. Greg, thanks for the invite. Gregory Wilnau: Yeah, my pleasure. I'm looking forward to to chatting with you and learning more about you, your practice and what you do. to get us started, why don't we just take a moment for you to maybe you could tell us a little bit about your your practice and what you specialize in. Jack Dwyer: Yeah. to Sunpo we grew out of a family office kind of business. So mostly kind of family offices, some G two, G three, along with younger, maybe some in the middle innings of developing their generational wealth, maybe with young kids. But I took a little bit of a windy path to get here. I actually was a finance major in college. But also did Army R T C at the University of Notre Dame to help pay for it. So my Gregory Wilnau: Yeah. Jack Dwyer: starting starting career was more soldier than investment advisor. Gregory Wilnau: I like that. Jack Dwyer: The yeah, the so I did four years in Germany, which is really cool to to live in a different culture, including six months in the northern Macedonia is what it's called now, part of the former Yugoslavia, with the UN peacekeeping mission. So it was an incredible experience as a early twenties kid, getting getting to live on a different continent. But then got off active duty but stayed in the National G Army National Guard here in Missouri and transitioned from a tanker like armor officer to engineer and then got mobilized to command a bridge company in Iraq. So whenever insurgents blew up bridges on our supply line, we'd go put in a a temporary one to help keep supplies moving. And and to be honest, it doesn't seem that related, but it actually has helped me a lot in my financial life because I find you know, trying to dissect people's goals and objectives and what's going on in markets a little bit to trying to figure out the the fog of war with a lot of different moving pieces trying to synthesize them down into what matters to this person and what we need to do to get there. Gregory Wilnau: Yeah, I could see how engineering would help you understand how things work and then be able to unpack them. You know, it's interesting to me. A lot of advisors that I talked to in an interview on this podcast, they actually will share that they they, if if not in the army, they'll have they'll have done some sort of engineering and then they realize they d they actually want to do financial planning. So engineering turn financial advisor is is actually Jack Dwyer: Yeah. Gregory Wilnau: a fairly common thing, but Maybe you could okay, so you started your firm. Maybe you could tell us a little bit more about kind of what inspired you to do this. And then also you mentioned that you're a family office. Maybe you could take a moment to also explain what a family office is and then kind of what is what inspired Jack Dwyer: Yeah, that's Gregory Wilnau: you to do this. Jack Dwyer: that's a good way good question segue tying those together. So soon after I got back from Iraq, I had thirty days leave and was trying to figure out what I wanted to do in life and ended up finding Hammond Associates, which was a big endowment consultant. I think we were like the third largest endowment consultant in the world. But you know, you get to be on the board of a a big endowment or foundation by donating a fair amount of money. And if you're gonna donate a lot of money, then you have other money usually out to the side. So we had those board members that would say, hey, can you do what you're doing for the endowment for us? And that's where my partner Michael Pompey and I came in. We would help those clients that had to do pesky things like pay taxes that the endowment or foundation didn't have to worry about. So so we started started working with a handful of those around the country. And then in twenty eleven, Hammond was sold to Mercer, the big health and benefits and pension consultant around the globe. So it it was good, loved the people there, but it was a lot of shock going from a hundred and twenty people to like sixty thousand around the globe. They might be Gregory Wilnau: Yeah. Jack Dwyer: eighty thousand ish now. But it was great. So we Michael and I have worked together for twenty years in a small organization, a huge organization. And like I said, we love the people over time though. We just decided for our clients and their needs, creating something more bespoke focused on those those family offices and taxable clients made sense. some of them had concerns around, you know, our own. products or other kind of conflicts like managers could have paid to attend conferences. So Gregory Wilnau: Right. Jack Dwyer: we created Sunpoint, we chose the name Sunpoint to shine a bright light of transparency on things like fees and conflicts of interest that we saw as an issue with other parts of the industry. Gregory Wilnau: So sun point means transparency. I like that. They Jack Dwyer: Yep, exactly. Deal. Gregory Wilnau: say sunlight's the best disinfectant, right? Jack Dwyer: Very true. Gregory Wilnau: I love that story. I love how you also have the the background, but then you and your partner have an experience working for a larger firm and that's what inspired you to do something more bespoke where you could have a a bigger impact and a more intimate relationship. So I I really Jack Dwyer: Yeah. Gregory Wilnau: like that. Jack Dwyer: Yeah. And just the open architecture of an RIA and R RIA in particular is was really attractive to us because the worst thing would be like, hey, we have this firm minimum that isn't flexible, or no, we can't talk about, you know, tax or legal stuff because we don't want to get in legal trouble in this huge organization. So to me that's one of the great things that Sometimes I'm the right professional to handle something for one of the families who we work with. Sometimes it's referring to some someone else. And often it's us working together to bring in a third or fourth or fifth professional onto the team to all Gregory Wilnau: Mm-hmm. Jack Dwyer: make sure we're coordinating together. Like just this morning I set up for a client who's thinking about funding a spousal lifetime access trust because they're worried about lifetime gift exemption. you know, a call with their attorney and their CPA that they already work with, but so that we can all be on the same page since it touches both the state planning, tax planning, investment planning. Gregory Wilnau: Yeah. So I wanna go into more about how you work with your client in a little bit first. Let's let's take a step back and maybe we could talk more about your your clients, the types of people that you work with. maybe you could take a moment to kind of just to describe the the the kind of person who who comes to you. Who do you typically work with? Jack Dwyer: Yeah. The not to start with the negative, but people, you know, that are day traders, they're looking for the next hot stock tip are definitely not our target market. We're focused on long-term relationships, joke growing generational wealth by helping them make thoughtful decisions and making sure they have clear goals. So I think I mentioned we work with some established family offices where it might be generations two through four, and again some some who are young. The a lot of times seems like the you know the catalyst could be anything job change, divorce, marriage, Gregory Wilnau: Mm-hmm. Jack Dwyer: selling a business a lot of times. so so people with A lot of information and data they need to gather together and who might not sure be sure either they're on the right path or what the next step is. and then you asked about kind of targets. N not that we really market specifically to these people, but two areas that it seems like have become common clients of ours are like tech or biotech entrepreneurs. We have quite a few of. and finance professionals, which seems a little oxymoronic because they do Gregory Wilnau: Interesting. Jack Dwyer: this themselves. But yeah, really interesting story, I think, had another, I'm a Michael and I are both CFA charter holders and had another CFA charter holder hire us last year to consult on his planning and investment portfolio. It it started out as a conversation. We'd known each other for several years and he reached out because his parents are getting to be into their 80s and needed some help. So we worked through that, like, hey, mom and dad, you know, have estate stuff, but they need to get everything consolidated in one place so that it's easy for you and your brother over time to not worry so much about. And as we talked through it, he said, you know, I really could use this kind of structure and advice in my own life. so I ended up becoming a a client also and that really meant a lot to me that somebody who's a professional in our industry and could probably technically do most things we do was was interested in working together. Gregory Wilnau: Yeah. Yeah. They trusted you. Yeah. That's that's interesting. They like the structure and and and the advice you said. That's really interesting. I that's it really stands out that financial finance professionals also want to work with you too. all right, let's dig into this a little bit more because I wanna understand kind of the situation that your your clients are in. when it c What are some of the questions that your clients will typically ask when they meet with you for the first time? What's keeping them up at night? Jack Dwyer: Yeah, maybe less I'll get to the second one second, but first, just one of the ones, not necessarily keeping them up, but I we get a lot of times a question about how we get paid. And I I'd really like that question because I already mentioned, you know, we chose the name to shine a bright light of transparency and act as a fiduciary so we don't get soft dollars from anyone. So that's one of the things I definitely like to talk about is just understanding how people are getting charged fees and what they're paying for. And then the one I think that does keep a lot more people up at night, I was thinking about is how do I prepare my kids, grandchildren for wealth, especially Gregory Wilnau: Mm. Jack Dwyer: the the family offices we work with a lot of times. I mean, a lot of the math goes into planning for how to minimize taxes, how to minimize estate taxes if they're over the thirty million dollar estate lifetime estate exemption for a couple. but often the family has the the flip side of you know, how do I keep make sure they're good people and have enough work ethic to keep going? and when do I Gregory Wilnau: Yeah. Jack Dwyer: talk to them about stuff? So we actually also do a fair amount of work with families creating thing well, A doing financial education early on in the process, because Missouri, like a lot of states, has some requirement for financial education in high school, but it's like one one class out of four years in my experience isn't fantastic. So being able to sit down with children and grandchildren high school Gregory Wilnau: Yeah. Jack Dwyer: age ish. I've done it as young as sixth grade, just Gregory Wilnau: Wow. Jack Dwyer: to talk about how markets work. and again, I I think for younger kids today, the big picture how markets work is important because I think they get bombarded with things like crypto or NVIDIA stock or whatever's hot. Like, hey, I guess NVIDIA at least is a better example than what was it? AMC and Bed Bath and beyond that were you know, all the rage meme stocks. So trying to give Gregory Wilnau: Yeah. Jack Dwyer: people a the pers perspective of the things they should be thinking about and the options out there are really good. Gregory Wilnau: I love that. So there's some questions around how you get paid, which makes sense because that transparency is something that's really important. but then some things that sound sound more nuanced and are more unique to you and your client base. So things like how do I prepare my family for wealth? you know, minimize taxes, estate taxes, how can you educate my family to prepare them? I love that you sit people down as early as sixth grade and really educate them on how the market works and teach them how to think and and to prepare them. So Jack Dwyer: Yeah, the Gregory Wilnau: I love that. Jack Dwyer: at the micro level that's great for the kids. And then more top down with grandma and grandpa or mom and dad, we often will help create a family mission and values list that, you know, I always say it's important that we think around about passing along personal values at the same time we're passing along account values. So Gregory Wilnau: Yeah. Jack Dwyer: we just did that with one family recently that had the grandparents essentially had their grandkids, so G three, sign kind of an attestation, like, hey, we know we're part of this family and here's our mission statement, what we're looking to achieve, and our five core values that they had chosen. So that Gregory Wilnau: Yeah. Jack Dwyer: that was a pretty cool exercise, just making sure those people that are twenty one to thirty two years old all Gregory Wilnau: Yeah. Jack Dwyer: were kind of bought into grandma and grandpa's vision. Gregory Wilnau: Man, I love that. I can imagine being in in in those shoes and having just a peace of mind around knowing that you're you're leaving that legacy and leaving so much more than than money, but having those values listed and knowing that your family is being educated is something that I could see being incredibly valuable. I like to understand a little bit more about typical situations that your clients come to you with that they need you to kind of lead them through. And it sounds like you mentioned w what that might be already. but maybe you'd like to answer that question separately. Is there any is there a typical situation that your clients come to you with that they need you to lead them through? Does anything stand out? Jack Dwyer: Yeah, one good story we do have just recently also a younger kind of tech executive who's making a transition from one hyperscaler company to a different one. So he's in a great position, and his wife's got a good job. but they have a young child thinking about buying a new house. So he came to us. We I was really excited like the day that he was planning on resigning and changing jobs and said, Hey, let's talk through this. Like, I have these RSUs from the company that I'm at that I'm giving up because they haven't all vested. and a lot of my pay at the new place is gonna be in the form of RSUs and it's not a publicly traded company yet. So there's some risk there. What do we have to do to Is there anything we needed to do to adjust the plan to account for those things? So again, obviously super successful person and family. and I love when people are engaged and we can do the give and take, but it really only took a half hour, 45 minute kind of conversation to say, okay, well, if you're, you know, your pay might be going down a little bit and there's a little more risk in these RSUs. So of your sign on bonus, let's set some more aside to make sure we have the down payment for the house that we are going to accumulate over the next year or two set aside. And then also you know, just looking in the future, doing a little cash flow planning, like, yeah, I here are several things where you can tighten your belts if necessary. So it shouldn't significantly impact their lifestyle and they shouldn't be able to keep putting money away each year. So it was a great conversation. Gregory Wilnau: Yeah, I love that. Being able to sit down with somebody and help them map all that out. Obviously, you know, nothing's a are guarantee nothing's a guarantee and you don't know exactly what's gonna happen, but just kind of thinking through that and putting a plan plan around it I can see would be really valuable. and goes in line with, you know, your your your your mission, which is transparency. So communicating transparently with your clients, I think, is something that sounds very unique to you that that they value. All right. Jack Dwyer: Yeah, and then sorry. I was I was just Gregory Wilnau: No, no, no. Go ahead, Jack. Jack Dwyer: gonna say I don't know that you really asked about exactly how we work together with clients, but just the a good tie into that story is we usually start out like creating a family playbook with a list of their team, timeline, like you know, who's involved in their life, spouse, kids, if they might support a sibling or a parent, and then timeline in terms of when they might retire or trust aspirations or life expectancy. so building that ahead of time gives us a lot of situational awareness. So when this Gregory Wilnau: Yeah. Jack Dwyer: comes up, we already know a lot of the players and a lot of the dates. So we can can adjust a few things. like in the military, I always say, you know, no good plan survives first contact with the enemy. And financial plans Gregory Wilnau: Right. Jack Dwyer: are a lot like that, but you're way better off if you have the plan to adjust from. than if you're just going in blind and trying to figure out what to do when the proverbial stuff hits the fan. Gregory Wilnau: Yeah. We we're gonna go into more how you work with your clients in a little bit. Jack Dwyer: Okay. Gregory Wilnau: But I love the famil that creating that family playbook, just you know, having it there and also having a conversation around it and then getting it in black and white I could see would be really valuable. so I wanna talk a little bit about your clients and and how they find you. where do they tip where do you typically find your clients? How do they typically find you rather? where do they where do Jack Dwyer: Yeah. Gregory Wilnau: they where do they come from? Jack Dwyer: of course the I'd say of course, but individual client referrals are most dependable or reliable. So a lot of the things we think about are how you know to make it easier for our clients to help tell our stories, and a lot of times it's with stories about the great things we're helping do. But really, you know, we set up three goals for the year, one being like a client growth and client experience. and to me the client experience is always the most important one because if we continually wow our current clients, that will lead them to to talk about us. So so Sometimes I feel I find it a little challenging 'cause I never have a hot stock story that's super cool at a cocktail party. But when you know, you take somebody's kid who's going through a messy divorce and can manage to guide them through that and protect assets through the generational trust they've set up and stuff, that that also goes a long way to the the family's peace of mind. Like, I I rolled this wheelbarrow for full of kind of crap into my advisor's office and they managed to in six months or something sift through it enough so that it turned out to be a halfway decent situation for my family overall. yeah, making trying to make lemons out of lemonade or lemonades out of lemons. Gregory Wilnau: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well you know, I mean that flash flashy stuff, probably doesn't, you know, resonate well with your with your clients, but you know, that service and commitment to service and deeply caring about those people, probably so would be I'm obviously I don't know your clients, I've never spoken with them, but seems like that would be much more compelling than just some flashy stock tip. Jack Dwyer: Yeah. And I think Matt mentioned the analogy we really like to use to you before, which is garden glove service. Instead of white glove kind of waiters carrying out and placing placing pa plates and waiting on our clients, we think of ourselves much more as gardeners where we're digging digging in, getting dirty with you and working together really to build a a lasting legacy that will grow over time. Gregory Wilnau: I really like that. I've never heard that before. We we dig in with you. That's Jack Dwyer: Yeah. Gregory Wilnau: cool. I like that a lot. a couple things that I want to touch on before we talk about how you work with your clients. I like to always kind of ask, you know, what the future holds for you and what your vision is. So where do you see taking your practice in the next two to three years? What's your vision? Are there any goals you're working on? Jack Dwyer: Yeah. I mean we're continuing to grow, you know, targeting to grow fifteen ish percent a year, like in terms of assets and revenue, but also building out more of these other wraparound services for families. So I think we've always done a fantastic job of investment management and kind of institutional quality investment management back to our Hammond and Mercer days. and kind of core financial planning is good. But feel like we could continue to build out both family governance, next gen education, because I think we do a l a good job with kids, but we could also build out more around those kind of life events you're talking about, like other checklists Gregory Wilnau: Yeah. Jack Dwyer: for for marriage or kids. and then philanthropy, I've done a fair amount of work on and we've done a a white paper about our philanthropic framework helping people define their, you know, philanthropic goals, a structure to do that, if it's a donor advised fund or a foundation, and just the ways to make it efficient, like a qualified charitable deductions. But I do feel like we could do even even more there. I'm I'm on the board of a nonprofit here, our ladies in that helps women that are homeless and pregnant, gives them shelter and wraparound services for a year and then has like a two year follow up after that. But that giving back is really important to me and helping people, other people be efficient so it costs them the least amount and whatever s causes their support and get the the most benefit out of it is one of the things I find particularly interesting and important to me. Gregory Wilnau: Yeah. I'm noticing a pattern where you like you have these kind of unique structural process things that are designed around adding or delivering on a s on a specific service to a client. And it sounds like you're working on really building them out. I think you've mentioned like a wraparound service and creating the structure there. So like the internal structure, the process, and kind of how you work with the client. Mm. I like that a lot. It should shows kind of Jack Dwyer: Mm-hmm. Gregory Wilnau: your your engineer mind at work, right? Creating Jack Dwyer: Yeah. Gregory Wilnau: creating order out of out of chaos. I'm seeing a Jack Dwyer: Yeah. Gregory Wilnau: I'm seeing a pattern there with you, Jack. I I really like that. Jack Dwyer: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I mean, like our I don't know if it's a tagline is clarity, comfort and confidence that take take that big mess of information or data that exists in the world and synthesize it down to usable information to people to help give them some clarity around their life that leads to confidence in better decisions, that leads to more comfort so they can sleep at night. Gregory Wilnau: So you mentioned some of the way some of the directions that you want to take your your practice. Is anything standing in your way? Any challenges? Jack Dwyer: Hmm. The I mean things are good. Always seems like business development and advisors. I mean, so we've added what five other kind of advisors, some more established and might have a family office client or two, but also trying to translate all our family office experience down to a lot of those clients that might be one to ten million dollars in investable assets. So They don't necessarily have to do estate planning, but the family education and a lot of times family governance might be really important to them, even Gregory Wilnau: Mm-hmm. Jack Dwyer: if they're, you know, not creating a multi-generational trust. I don't know any parents that don't want their to set their kids up for for success. Gregory Wilnau: Yeah. Definitely. Definitely. Well, I love it. Love it. Love it. All right. let's let's talk about your actual process. Maybe you could walk us through that. You touched on it a little bit. but let's let's dive deeper into it. So when somebody let's say somebody becomes a client today. What does onboarding look like? What happens the first couple of weeks? And what does it look like to work with you over the course of a calendar year? Could you unpack that a little bit? Jack Dwyer: Yeah. so you know, of course, up front getting to taking time to understand the clients needs and really make sure we're a good fit together is one of the most important things. And that's where that playbook with the team timeline, talking about their cash flow and balance sheet comes in important. And then synthesizing those to really get to what their objectives are. understanding risk tolerance. Cause it's something I like to to push on. I mean, you can pick on a scale of one to ten. you know, I'm an eight, so should I be eighty percent equities? Like if it was just that easy, I'd be really worried about my job getting replaced by AI because you could just pick the right thing. I like telling people mathematically given history, your best asset allocation is a hundred percent equities. Like highest expected return, but there's a lot of volatility along the way. My goal is to get you to the right asset allocation, which is the one that you can live with, you know, even when stuff really does hit the fan. And if Gregory Wilnau: Yeah. Jack Dwyer: your equities are down 50% and your portfolio is down twenty, kind of like we might have experienced in two thousand eight, which as an aside is getting harder for more people to conceptualize because it's getting getting further and further away. You know what then? Like are you it's easy to say you know, you're okay with that now, but creating an investment policy where we have rebalancing rules that says, Hey, I'm gonna rebalance or add to equities if they're down a lot more than bonds. and I feel like that commitment helps people stick with the plan. So so Figuring out the goal, figuring out target allocation and managers to to fill out the allocation is the the important first step. But then going kind of continually, we send clients a a monthly newsletter, quarterly performance reports that we use at a par as a reporting system that I think is really robust, especially for the large clients, if you have any private investments or or stuff like that on the side that help take that mess of data. And and Gregory Wilnau: Mm-hmm. Jack Dwyer: make it usable information. and then so all our clients we meet with at least once or twice a year to talk through these things. You know, some people want it to be on autopilot and like you just handle that stuff and tell me if there's a problem. So we can do that. but especially for the family offices, I'd say we meet with most of them three to four times a year to to Gregory Wilnau: That's lot. That's good. Yeah. Jack Dwyer: to to talk through everything that's going on. And of course, plenty of ad hoc meetings where I mentioned one issue with the the client creating a slat, you know, getting playing the quarterback role, getting together an accountant and an attorney to to make sure everybody's on the same page. Gregory Wilnau: I love that. So you create lot of the structure to bring them on, get them on a regular cadence. minimum once per year. but for the more complex cases, you meet multiple times a year, and of course you're available ad hoc as anything comes up. So I I Jack Dwyer: Yes, sir. Gregory Wilnau: love that. I love it. All right, let's let's land this plane, Jack. For someone listening who is interested in possibly working with you or or getting in touch, what should they do next? Where should where should they go? Jack Dwyer: Yeah, our website's just sunpointinvestments dot com. I think is a great place. You can see our team bio and there's some FAQ if that's interested. But the the easiest thing is probably just to click the button that says start a conversation, and that will connect you with me or the the right advisor if there might be another better match. so we can reach out. And you know, one of the things I think relative to this. Yeah, there's plenty of people I think who could do it on their own. And I mean I could renovate my kitchen on my own, but I d knowing myself I definitely should not. I I think of it in terms of like a professional athlete like is the one of the best physical specimens on earth and could do all kinds of incredible things, but they still have coaches. And Gregory Wilnau: Mm-hmm. Jack Dwyer: you know, Michael Jordan made the point, one of his greatest attributes was being coachable. So if Gregory Wilnau: Yeah. Jack Dwyer: elite athletes use is use coaches, I like to think that's one of the reasons, like I said, our other CFA charter holder colleague hired us. you know, I just think about how much better a young entrepreneur could be at running their business if they had a coach like us alongside to worry about the financial planning and investing and and give them guidance on their side. Gregory Wilnau: I love it. Love it. Well, thank you so much, Jack. Thank you for sharing your story, your unique take on things and the commitment you off and service you provide your clients. Thank you so much. Jack Dwyer: Sounds good. Thanks, Greg.