A Conversation with: Bob Bedritis

The Profiles in Leadership series features conversations with organizational leadership experts to discuss important lessons they have learned and what “Hiring for Good” means to them. This series helps us better understand how leadership drives positive transformations and growth for people, organizations, and the world around us.

This episode features a conversation with Bob Bedritis, founder and Managing Director of Oswego Private Wealth Management. He is known for helping business owners become financially independent of their businesses, often without selling or giving up control. As a Certified Exit Planner, Bob believes that a business owner deserves to maximize the value of their life’s work. His exclusive Blue Print Stress Test uncovers and systematically closes those gaps that could threaten a business and personal financial plan. Although trained as a wealth manager and exit planner, Bob believes that his real work is in protecting and maximizing the dreams of the most productive people on the planet, the American entrepreneur! 

 Bob previously worked in Senior roles with PaineWebber, UBS, and Merrill Lynch before launching his own entrepreneurial career. When not leading his team during the week, Bob enjoys life with his wife, Michele, and spending time with his children and grandchildren. On weekends, you can find him on the tennis or squash courts and occasionally struggling on the golf course.  

 “I believe that business owners deserve to maximize the value of their life’s work and lead lives of amazing significance, taking care of the people they love, the causes they care about, and making a difference in the world!”

Bob’s Contact Information: bob@opwm.com | 503-931-8104 | www.OswegoPrivateWealth.com

“When I was in business school, I learned something about—the prof was named McGregor. And he had what he called the Theory X and Theory Y.

Theory X assumes that your employees are all lazy imbeciles, and that you better have high command and control over them and make sure they always know who’s in charge and micromanage every moment of their lives.

Theory Y believes that you have confident, competent, self-motivated people to work for. And working those eight and a half years for a Theory X guy I went way out in the other direction of Theory Y—of hiring and trusting people.

You know what? 90% of the time it is wonderful, and it pays. And people thrive and are passionate in those roles. However, it all comes down to what you do—making sure you have the right hire, the right fit.”

— Bob Bedritis

Transcript

Suzanne Hanifin: Well, hello, welcome to another Hiring for Good podcast. And as you know, Hiring for Good is a podcast on leadership, and we invite our trusted advisers to be part of our Hiring for Good podcast. Today I am so fortunate to have Bob Bedritus with us. I'm going to read you Bob's bio, and I can't wait for you to hear about his journey. But Bob, welcome first and foremost.

Bob Bedritis: Hi, thank you Suzanne. It's such a pleasure to be here.

Suzanne Hanifin: Thank you. So, Bob is the founder and managing director of Oswego Private Wealth Management. He is known for helping business owners become financially independent of their businesses, often without selling or giving up control. As a certified exit planner, Bob believes that a business owner deserves to maximize the value of their life's work. His exclusive blueprint stress test uncovers and systematically closes those gaps that could threaten a business and personal financial plan. Although trained as a wealth manager and an exit planner, Bob believes that his real work is in protecting and maximizing the dreams of the most productive people on the planet — the American entrepreneur.

Bob previously worked in senior roles with Payne Weber, UBS, and Merrill Lynch before launching his own entrepreneurial career. When not leading his team during the week, Bob enjoys a life with his wife Michelle, spending time with his kids and grandkids. And, on weekends you can find him on the tennis or squash courts, and occasionally struggling on the golf course.

So once again Bob, welcome. And I am really excited for everyone to hear about you and your journey because you have had such a fascinating background and journey. So, I'm going to be quiet, turn it over to you, and share with us how you got to where you are today.

Bob Bedritis: Well, thank you Suzanne. Well, my journey needs to start with family. My mother and father were from Riga, Latvia, and when World War II broke out my father, all of 16 years old, throws a rifle over his shoulder and fights Soviet aggression throughout the war. Post-war, when the Allies came in, my mother, my father, and my mother’s parents on her side—my grandparents on my mother’s side were lucky enough to get out before the Soviets took full control. The rest of my family did not.

So they were--they were moved to a displaced person camp in Munich, Germany, where my parents met and they married, and—they had their papers. They were ready to go to Australia. At the 11th hour, the First Baptist Church of Cleveland, Ohio, sponsored them on a humanitarian mission and brought them to America for a life of freedom. These young 20-year-olds—20-some year olds. 21, 22-year-olds, they here—they go. And so, as you can probably imagine, a man whose education stopped at age 16 probably wasn't qualified to become a doctor, lawyer, or CEO of a company. So, my dad started working in a factory, in a warehouse for a company in Cleveland, Ohio. Lo and behold, he’s a smart guy, he started—he went to school at night, got his education, got his degrees, worked his way up within the company, and had a 30-year career and became an Executive Vice President and the General Manager in Columbus, Ohio, where I predominantly grew up.

I go off to college — Miami University — and when I came home one break, my father tells me that his company got bought out by a larger concern. They said, "Edgar, thanks. Thirty fun years, you have two weeks and you're gone." And here’s my dad. He’s 52 years old. He’s only worked for one company his entire life and he—he didn't even blink. I'm astonished when I think about it being a little bit older. How my dad, who had to leave his family behind because of a war, try to figure out how to do some things out with another language in Germany, and then come to America — everything thrown at him — didn’t phase him.

He very quickly he regrouped and started his own company. My father became an entrepreneur — Buckeye Business Associates Inc. They brokered bars and restaurants. They were in the restaurant business and they were basically a brokerage firm for restaurants and bars. He ran that business for 10 wonderful years and retired. And that was that. However, when he retired, he simply shut down the business. He didn’t monetize the business. He didn’t have a succession plan. He didn’t do the kinds of things that I do now and I can’t help thinking had he had somebody like me back in those days, it would have been different financially. Although he did fine and lived a great life—he just died a few years ago at the age of 92. And he had a wonderful wonderful life.

My mother at 89 passed away. And my mother, interestingly enough, was also an entrepreneur. I didn’t understand it at the time, but as soon as her feet hit American soil, she became an Avon lady. When she died—the year before she died, she was recognized as one of the leading Avon ladies with 60 years of tenure. It was wonderful.

Suzanne Hanifin: That is incredible. You know, I don't know if you know this, but both my parents also... well, my mother was Swedish and was a young teenager during World War II. It's amazing how that in itself shapes not just how they are, but also how you are as their offspring. And—you know….

Bob Bedritis: No question about it. No question about it. So what I did, so what I learned family meant everything. My parents were — and this might be a triggering word for some people in this world today — but I say they were patriots. What I mean by that is they loved America. They came out of a communist system, and they loved the freedoms and they just had such joy in being Americans. So, I was raised with that—that basic paradigm that you love your country, you love your family, and family is everything.

Matter of fact, I grew up in such an ethnic household –English is my second language. I didn’t learn English until I went to first grade. We were Latvian speakers that whole time. And so, what did I do? I wanted to use—I wanted to figure out how to become this first-generation American, and I used two things: I used sports and I used education as my way to make it in this world.

And I went to Miami University, got very very lucky to get into financial services, and got with some terrific companies — Merrill Lynch, Payne Weber, and then became UBS through the buyout. I sort of rode the chairs. I went from a broker to a branch manager in the early '90s. I was the West Coast divisional out of San Francisco for Payne Weber. Went to New York, became National Sales Manager, then ultimately ran the wealth management group for Payne Weber and UBS out of New York until about—until about 2001.

I had four young kids. I was killing myself. I was on the 5:15 train into—I lived in New Jersey, to the train into Manhattan. I was always on airplanes. I was rarely home because I could be there before the kids woke up, and I was lucky to get home in time for the kids to— to tuck them in. And so I said I needed to make a change. Of course, I did nothing this kind—this comes into your world a little bit, Suzanne, because of course I did nothing. I just got depressed that I was working too hard and I was never home. But it was—the job was fulfilling.

But out of the blue, a friend of mine was offered a role in as he said it to me when he called Portland, Oregon. And—I—he said, "Bob, I think you might be interested. This sounds like a good role for you." And so anyway, long story tolerable, I took the role. I moved to Portland. I loved it because I had spent a lot of time up here in my San Francisco days when I was the divisional and—I loved it and it was—I made the move, probably not fully understanding what I was getting into and I made the move to come out here to be CEO of this fourth largest privately held company in the state of Oregon. And it was really not a good fit. It was really—it was a really bad fit. I probably interviewed better than I should have because I really wasn't fit for the role because it was a very actuarial engineering kind of company. Financial services but it was an operations role, and I'm not an operations guy. I was a distribution guy, a sales leader, sales manager. And so, they got kind of tired of me after about a year and decided it was time for them to fire me.

So I followed in my dad's footsteps and I started — I retired for three years, in my young 40s, younger than my dad. Then finally, I said I really should be doing something. I'm too young and I have too much passion for things, so I started my first company, Paradigm Capital Group. We did consulting for hedge funds, private equity firms, some banks, and some insurance companies. After 13 years, I felt that I was still once again I fell in the same track — always on airplanes: Boston, Austin, Chicago, New York, LA, San Francisco.

I started just a decade ago — while we're filing this right now—taping this right now — it's exactly a decade since I started Oswego Private Wealth Management. I will just give you two quick stories on that and then quit monologuing.

Story number one is 16 months after I started this company, you had mentioned I play squash and tennis. I took a squash racket into my right eye, and—which created a detached retina, which would not reattach for over a year properly. I ended up having nine surgeries for my eye, and if anyone's ever had a detached retina, they know that they put this permeable gas into your eye and then require you to lie face down 16 hours a day. So, the eight hours you're sleeping, that's great, but you've got to find eight waking hours to be faced down.

Then while I'm going through all of that, I'm diagnosed with cancer, and then one of my and then my canc—one of my well, the one and only cancer surgery created a blood clot in my lungs that almost killed me. As a matter of fact, when I was—I spent Christmas of that year up on the hill at OHSU, and the doctor said, "Yeah, 25% of the time the first sign of this—of pulmonary embolism is death, and you have about a 30% chance of dying this week in the hospital. Merry Christmas."

Anyway, while I went through all of that I had tons and tons and tons of time to reflect. While I was reflecting, I had a wealth management business that was just starting. I didn't know if I was going to live or die. I didn't know—I didn’t know what the future held for me on anything, let alone my business. I thought about, well, if I do get through this, what do I want my life to look like? What do I want my business to look like?

I reflected back on my father's journey, even my mother's journey—take—doing sales and taking inventory—my journey being a corporate guy but then ultimately realizing that I always should have been an entrepreneur from day one, honestly. And I said, that's it. I burned the ships. Any clients that I had that were not business owners, I transferred to another financial adviser that I know and trust. I let him manage my own money and I only kept the entrepreneurial business owner—my one and only client.

That's why I have such passion because, as you mentioned, I believe they deserve to lead—lead lives of amazing significance—taking care of the people they love, the causes that they care about, and making a difference in the world. Most of us, as Emerson said, lead lives—lead lives of quiet desperation—it was—or was it Thoreau? I don't remember now—but the most men lead lives of—men and women—lead lives of quiet desperation, and I don't believe that has to be so. I believe that, as you said, the most productive people on planet Earth deserve not only to maximize the value of their business but they deserve to lead an amazing life of significance. And that's the process we do with our blueprint stress test. That's what I'm passionate about, and that's why we're going strong helping family businesses, privately held businesses. And oh, by the way, we're a family business. My son Eric and my daughter Kim are a part of the business, and we have fun every day.

Suzanne Hanifin: Well, and it’s it's interesting for me to hear this journey, and I've always said we learn more with our scraped knees than we do when we win a gold medal. And our next question is always about formative experiences—things that have changed you—and a lot of times they're from external people or a situation. Yours is definitely an internal, who you are, and again, being able to have that opportunity to prioritize—even though it was a horrible situation—you've learned from that.

What other formative periods can you share with us that really shaped who you are? And again, I think we said it at the very beginning: it starts with family. It's how we are raised and, you know,  how how how that drives us. But bosses and or when you were a boss—share a time that either somebody helped you or you helped.

Bob Bedritis: Oh, oh sure, absolutely, that's fantastic. Well, first of all, I kind—I kind of look at my life as a three-act play. The first act was preparation — getting ready, getting educated, learning things. The second act was sort of that middle period where you just sort of go to work, make money—my Wall Street days, if you will. And the third act is the act I'm in now. And I want—I can actually answer this question in all three acts.

But, if you think about any play you've ever seen, the first act introduces the characters, the second act introduces the conflict, and the third act resolves it all. So, the third act should be the most exciting of all—and it—and it is for me.

So, in my first act as a kid, very influenced by teachers, and by sports, and by family, and my Latvian culture. And so, some of my greatest learnings were from coaches. I had some amazing coaches. I played hockey, I played basketball, played tennis—those were my three sports that I played. And I had just amazing coaches throughout those years and that meant so much to me.

When I—when I shoot into the business world, I had both mentors that I wanted to emulate and mentors that I couldn't do—I couldn’t do enough to not want to be like them. And so, during my—one of those companies—I—I won't name it—but I happened to have probably the roughest, roughest, meanest—boss for eight and a half years. I was his number two for those eight and a half years. And he was a—had an IQ off the charts—Columbia undergrad, Harvard Business School—he woke up every morning just wanting to see who he could destroy that morning. Since I was so close in his orbit, I could see so much about what he was doing. But he—but he taught me something. When I was in business school, I learned something about –auth—the prof was named McGregor. And he had what he called the Theory X and Theory Y.

Theory X assumes that your employees are all lazy imbeciles, and that you better have high command and control over them and and and make sure they always know who's in charge and micromanage every moment of their lives.

Theory Y believes that you have confident, competent, self-motivated people to work for. And working those eight and a half years for a Theory X guy, I—I went way out in the other direction of Theory Y—of hiring and trusting people.

You know what? 90% of the time it is wonderful, and it pays. And people—thrive and are passionate in those roles. However, it all comes down to what you do—making sure you have the right hire, the right fit. Because if you do find somebody who is lazy, doesn't care, is unmotivated, then if you have a boss like I was, which is a Theory Y boss, boy, could you take advantage of me for a long, long time. So.

Suzanne Hanifin: You know, that is so funny, Bob, because I've always said I'm the worst manager there is, and therefore I only hire people who don't need managing because yes, I am definitely a—a Y-Y person. Also,

Bob Bedritis: Yeah, I believe I'm a good leader. I do, and I've had that feedback. I do believe I'm a good leader, if that's not too immodest. And I love leading—leading the team and leading. I want to be a leader of my client. I don't just want to be an adviser to my clients; I want to show leadership for them to bring them in areas of that amazing life of significance that they didn't even think was possible.

But then it's easy. When I had decades of raising my children, I already knew what I got, and I've got great, confident, super super talented kids. They're not kids; they're in their 30s. But the trust is just obviously already there.

Suzanne Hanifin: Well, and you mentioned trust a couple of times, and I think a good leader understands those values that drive them, but they also know how to operationalize those values. Talk to me about what is important and how have you operationalized those.

Bob Bedritis: Oh, thanks for asking that. Well, I believe that there are four key systems that every business has to have, and we've done a lot of work with EOS and some other coaches, and we've brought in people because we think there are a lot of people a lot smarter than us in creating those things. So we think that there has to be a good structure, a good system, which is why we have this—you know our exclusive blueprint stress test. It's a systematized way of doing business. We all know as a team when we meet one of our potent—a new client—a potential client in the first meeting, we know exactly what we're doing, how the path we're taking them down every step of the way, all the way to having a great relationship and servicing them.

So, we've invested heavily into computer systems, investment systems, CRMs—every—because our business is systematized. So, we think there's a structural capital every business should have. We also think that there's a customer-client capital, that—which is a cultural capital. We believe we have to have a great culture that we want our clients to feel they're part of our family, we're part of their family. We care about one another, that we trust one another, and they know they're getting unbiased fiduciary advice from us.

The next is what—human capital, which is the team itself that's doing all the work. Again, we're a family business plus one, but we’re—we hired for character and for competence first—but character first, competence second—and then we just feel we have a good good fit there. And the—and there’s just there’s how the world sees us—capital, I guess. And—we—we're not boastful as a company; we do a little bit online; we do a little bit—you know,we have a at least we have a website and things like that  for people to get to know us, but we're not big networkers. We're not big trying to be everything to everybody; we're very selective on—on the few clients that we want to take on every year, and we really want to make it—we want to make it a—a very special—relationship when we bring a client on.

Suzanne Hanifin: Oh, absolutely, and it has to, like you said, match you also. It's not one-sided; it's definitely two-sided. So I'm going to ask you something that we have not talked about. It is really hard working with your own kids, and there's a joke in my family that my oldest son Johnny came to work for us—me, and three weeks later, I fired him. And now my two other kids always say, "You know, Mom, are you going to fire me too?" Because it's—it’s tough. What advice do you have that you've learned on managing and working with your own children?

Bob Bedritis: Wow, well, that's—that’s a great question. Well, let me say first and foremost, I think—I think the leader has to have in his mind what the culture needs to be and what it looks like. So, when I brought Kim and Eric on board, at different times, once we were on board together, we sat down and we really talked about—full day offsite. And we just said, "What should our culture be?" And we came up with five core values that we had to agree on.

But I will admit they were important to me as we fleshed them out. I didn't have them in my—on paper necessarily; they were kind of in my head. The first one was to own your 20 square feet, or get things done. It's just like, do what you say you're going to do, finish what you start, show up on time, and be polite—say please and thank you. And we said those four things—you get things done. If something is handed to you, nobody has to follow up with you. You will get those things done.

The second thing that we felt was important was humility. It's important to us as a family, and we felt that. I can tell you—Eric’s in the four years that I've been with Eric, we've had exactly zero fights. Not that we haven't had conflicts. Not that we haven’t had issues that come up that we need to resolve, but we've had zero anger, zero—fights. And I like to joke, when I moved here from New York—which is, you know I'm not a New Yorker, I'm Ohio kid—but when I moved here from New York, I used to joke that I had to learn a new language. And someone would say, "What's that language?" and I'd say, "Once I moved to Portland, I had to learn how to be passive-aggressive." So—we won't allow that. No passive aggressiveness. There's humility.

Our third core value is integrity. And again, it's family; I don't have any issues with that. But if we were to bring in yet another outside person, that integrity issue—that that "do what you say you're going to do," "finish what you started," and "your word is your yes is yes and your no is your no"—critically important.

Then direct and open communication is our fourth.

The fifth one might surprise you: it's health and fitness. We've got a family of athletes, and the—I'm—I’m the weakest link. When they see some of the things I eat and-and said, "Dad, you've kind of missed the gym for a few days, so get going."

Suzanne Hanifin: Well, and it sounds like you hold each other accountable too.

Bob Bedritis: We do, yeah. We do.

Suzanne Hanifin: To make sure that these values are being lived every day, which I think is super important. Yeah, and and it's interesting, and I'm sure you've seen it as an entrepreneur, letting go of responsibilities—whether it's to Gen 2. Whether it’s to an outside—you know—person to take over day-to-day operations.

What do you typically see? What's the trends today in how entrepreneurs are exiting?

Bob Bedritis: Well, I—I would say one of the bad things we see—and this affects their ability to monetize their business and to maximize—the sale of their company if that’s what they choose to do, whether partial or full sale—is that they don't have a bench. They do everything. And the question is, can you take three months off, and your business would still run? Or does every single one of your clients still think they have to talk to you—the—the big boss, he or her, she or him? And—and—and—and you need to not delegate because that's the thing I hate doing, but delegate because that helps you build a business. We we find that there are a couple of things that can really kill the valuation of a company.

One is that too much command and control by that—by the owner whether it’s pride. Whether it’s ironically just a laziness to not take time to treat other—to train other people to do what they need to do or—or a desire that said not a contract gets signed that doesn’t have my eyeballs on it first. So we think that’s critical.

Another is c—you know—too much customer—penetr—concentration rather. You know it’s a successful business. They’re making hundred million dollar a year and it’s—and 80% of it comes from three contracts that could be canceled any day now, right? So those are the kinds of things we think. What we did in our—what we did, Suzanne in our firm though—I was influenced — I don't know, some of your listeners might know Dan Sullivan and the Strategic Coach.

I started Strategic Coach in 1997, and one of the concepts of Strategic Coach is something called unique ability, where you look say, “here are the three things that I'm great at, and here are three things that I'm horrible at”. And then you hire somebody who's great at those three things you're horrible at and probably not that good at the three things you're great at.

And so, and then, boy,I— I’ll morph that into EOS. So, I'm a Visionary — my Kolbe Index, I'm a 10 as a quick start, which means I come up with ideas, I make it all up, but I need somebody who follows through to make it real. That's Kim. She's—she’s my—my—integrator, my—my operation, she’s my—she's not my anything. She’s our operations and our admin. So, I can make it up, and Kim can make it real. Eric has more of a Kolbe that’s like I do. And so, that's how the team is — we know one another's strengths. We don't want—we don’t think it's good to have it’s—we don’t think it’s admirable or noble to have strong weaknesses. Make your strengths even stronger and let somebody else who has strengths where your weaknesses are make—make their strengths even stronger. Then bring those together, and we have a great team and great synergy by doing it that way.

Suzanne Hanifin: Yeah, that sounds amazing and again you’re speaking kind kind of my language of you know, looking at the organization holistically, find the holes, and fill those holes. Absolutely. So, Bob, you've had like—we we shared this incredible journey being corporate guide to entrepreneur, all this stuff, hiring family — looking back out of your long career, what advice would you give your 20-year-old self?

Bob Bedritis: Boy, that's such a great—grow up. Grow up faster, Bob. You were—we’ve been—you were a functional idiot for way too many years.

If I were talking to my 20 20-year-old self, boy that’s such a great question. I—I think first of all, I would have—I would have them really analyze what wall they want to put their ladder on. Right? Do you want to be that corporate guy? Why do you want to be that corporate guy? Do you understand the pluses and the minuses of that?

You know, back when I started, you know and we're contemporaries—I don't know that we had “What Color is Your Parachute?” that was just trying to tell you what kind of company to get into. It wasn’t really entrepreneurism, wasn't really a thing like it is now, taught in business schools. I didn't really see an entrepreneurial life for me, but knowing what I know now, that is clearly the path I should have taken from day one. Wish I had.

Not that I regret any of the—any of the experiences that I had, but I think that would be one thing. And then the other thing that's critical to me — and I know this wasn't really in the questions we're talking about, but my relationship with God. That's something that—h—my confrontation with Christianity, with Jesus, was in college, and it's—it’s permeated and it’s—my entire life.

It's—it’s—it’s what drives me and why I'm still doing what I'm doing. Why I love the interactions I have with people. And we have plenty of people who are of various faiths or even no faith, but it's in my core, and it's why I do what I do. It’s why—it’s just the most important thing to me of everything I do. I say it even supersedes family and my business. And so we bring that into every relationship we have—sometimes just quietly because there many of our clients don't feel the same way, which is totally fine. But it’s just, but I don't hide that it's important to me.

Suzanne Hanifin: Yeah, and it's a driving value of yours, obviously, and you're passionate about it. So thank you, Bob, for sharing.

And so, we always end our podcast on hiring for good. I mean, that's the name of it. So, what does hiring for good mean for you?

Bob Bedritis: Well, I can look at what are two ways. Hiring for good could be a staff, but we're a pretty lean staff, right? We—we’ve—I’m—I’ve run bigger bigger businesses obviously in the corporate world, but we're really a family business plus one. So, it's really me and three people.

But when I think of hiring for good, I think of how we bring—how we bring on clients. And so, when we talk to somebody, we want to make sure—we want to bring on just a select number of clients but we want to make sure we can really serve them. So, I have many introductory meetings to see—to see if there's a good fit.

Oftentimes, it isn't because they're a bad person or I'm a bad person, but it's just not the right fit for various and sundry reasons. And so it’s—so, when we first get together with people, I make them a couple of promises. Promise number one is the only—that I'll ask them a lot of questions, and the only decision they have to make at the end of our first meeting do they even want to have a second meeting. That's it.

And I will tell them at the end of the first meeting whether I feel I could really serve them and help them because my intention is to serve them and make a difference in their lives. If I feel I can, I'll ask for a second meeting, and they, of course, can say "not for me" or "yes for me."

But I will let them know at the end of the first meeting whether I feel that I could really serve them and help them. Because that’s my intention is to serve them and make a difference in their lives. And if I feel I can I’ll ask for a second meeting and they of course4 can say not for me or yes for me. But I—I will let them know at the end of the first meeting whether I think we should even have another meeting and if they agree then we-we go on. And if oftentimes, if either one of us feels not sure that this is the best fit…so that's the hiring I'm doing, Suzanne, is figuring out who should be a part of the Oswego Private Wealth family.

And it's a two-way street. I'm not doing it from any—elevated level; it's peer-to-peer. It's me and a client, and we just decide together: Is this a good fit? Do we both feel that I could be of real help to them, and do I feel they could be a really great part of our family?

Suzanne Hanifin: Absolutely. And so, it makes me want to ask whether there's a certain time that you get involved with an organization, or maybe I should ask it a different way—who is your ideal client, and how should they reach you?

Bob Bedritis: Yeah well—well, I believe that exit planning is present tense. I believe that every business should be ready to exit even if they don't plan for exiting for 20 years. By "business," I mean the owner. I mean the owner. And the owner—you don't know — look at my life. That cancer could have been it. I could have been dead eight years ago, and we'd never be having this lovely conversation. Right? Because that’s when I had my cancer. You just don't know. The proverbial "get hit by a bus," the C-word—my cancer—divorce, stuff happens. Right.

Your health can deteriorate significantly, even if it's slow, which speeds up. So, I believe that every business should be ready—exit-ready and that—that exit planning is present tense, not future tense and to be ready now.

So we love to be referred to talk to business owners who have successful businesses that are—you know, feel something might be slipping between the cracks. Everything looks great on the outside, but are they fully protected? We want to look, are they, you know--what kind of tax situation do they have? What kind of wealth transfer situation do they have? Do they have the right documents in place? Is the business set up for growth? I don't believe that's something you do six months before you're ready to sign a contract to sell the business. I believe that is a minimum five years or 10 years before you ever think about selling the business. And then we’ll help you grow too so that’s—did I answer that, Suzanne, or did I go off on a tangent?

Suzanne Hanifin: You sure did. No, no, I wanted you to answer that, because again, as a trusted advisor to Acumen and a referral partner to let other people know that to reach out to you.

Bob Bedritis: Yeah, I'd say we're looking for nice people who run successful businesses. And we do have—we do have a minimum investable value for taking on a new client, which is $2 million. But I will say that if somebody has a business—a significant business and they might not have $2 million in their checking account or investment account, we'll still work with—we will work with that client because we know we can make a difference for the business.

Suzanne Hanifin: And that's what it's all about, isn't it? Boy, Bob, I cannot thank you enough for your insights, your sharing of your journey and your story. And I feel like I need to say, all of Bob’s is at the bottom of this podcast. But thank you very much for being so honest and—and candid with me.

Bob Bedritis: Well, thank you, Susan. We love you here, and we just thank you so much for having us on your show or having me on your show, so yeah.

Suzanne Hanifin: Awesome. Thank you, Bob. Bob again—Oswego Wealth Management.

Bob Bedritis: Thanks.