Speaker 0: Hello and welcome to meet the Ria. Joining us now to share more about the history and mission of Bordeaux Wealth Advisors is managing partner, John Snare. So Jona, I've got to start with the name. How did you land on bordeaux? And what does good French wine have to do with investments?

Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, that's a really good question that we, we get a lot.

Speaker 1: Uh If you're, if you're a wine enthusiast, bordeaux is recognized as the gold standard of winemaking in the world. And we like to think that we're the gold standard of wealth management. And, you know, bordeaux are a classic blends of different grapes and we have a blend of, of people with different backgrounds and expertise that we bring to serving our clients.

Speaker 1: And, you know, we have offices in Northern California and, and Washington, which are the two largest wine producing states in the country. And so we, you know, we don't wanna offend our, our friends in, in Napa Valley, but that's uh kind of how the, the bordeaux bordeaux name came about.

Speaker 0: And in addition to diversification or uh having the right blend, so to speak, what would you say is a key to your investment philosophy.

Speaker 1: Well, we think of ourselves as a, we're a boutique wealth management firm and investment management plays a, a big part in what we do. But we do think of ourselves as a holistic wealth manager. We wanna be our client's first call whenever they have any financial concerns. And so,

Speaker 1: you know, that that's obviously investments, but it can also be income taxes, state tax planning, philanthropic planning. We do a lot of work in um because we're where we're located, uh people in the technology world that have equity compensation, we do a lot of planning around the tax impact on I OS and non-qualified options um

Speaker 1: and restricted stock units and, and things like that. And so, uh we, we try to bring all that together in the services that we provide to our clients.

Speaker 0: And what's been your growth strategy? Could you share a little bit more about your path to becoming a, a $4 billion ra a

Speaker 1: well, essentially our, our growth has been completely organic. We have not done any uh mergers or acquisitions in, in the last six years. II, I think that just the, the level of service that we bring to our clients has allowed us to, to grow through

Speaker 1: um client referrals and, and word of mouth and, and haven't um just haven't had to or haven't had the, the right opportunity to come along on the M and a front

Speaker 0: and given your locations in Silicon Valley and Seattle, you must throw in a lot of executives and clients from the tech community.

Speaker 1: Absolutely. I mean, they're probably the two most, most important technology markets, not just in the US, but maybe in the world and there's just been amazing wealth creation in these markets. Um And you know, the, the big names in the tech world, but then even that, that next rundown of all the companies, you know, in Seattle, if you, if you look at it all, all the companies that have been started by people that used to be at Amazon or Microsoft,

Speaker 1: there's just a whole ecosystem of, of these technology companies that um just do really interesting things and, and, and have created amazing levels of, of wealth and um all a lot of those people fit right into our, into our target client.

Speaker 0: And I'm sure it was uh challenging during the collapse of SVB. How do you um you know, make sure that your clients are comfortable and confident in their investments during turbulent times, not just during that one, but throughout other phases.

Speaker 1: Well, we did certainly get a lot of calls um and, and emails from people at concern just hearing the, the stories about Silicon Valley Bank and First Republic.

Speaker 1: And so um I, I always tell clients that you need to build portfolios that anticipate volatility because after volatility hits it's too late. So um we really emphasize, we we, we help our clients stay rich, not just get rich and so things like diversification and,

Speaker 1: you know, making sure you have assets in, in safe places. Um One of the kind of fundamental parts of our investment strategy is that we're, we're pretty heavy users of alternative investments. Um

Speaker 1: looking for things that are truly uncorrelated to the stock and bond markets to, to provide that cushion and a shock absorber when you, you know, see things like what happened last year in equity markets and and earlier this year. And so

Speaker 1: it is it's kind of a a comprehensive way of looking at portfolios and building in uh sho like I said, shock absorbers and and and diversification and as allocation that will protect the gets downturns.

Speaker 0: Finally, John, what do you think has been key to your success over the years? Any secret sauce or, or blend so to speak that you like to share?

Speaker 1: You know, I think one of the the great things about our firm is like you said, we manage a little over $4 billion and uh it's for about 220 families.

Speaker 1: And so we we have the ability our our client to advise the ratio is about 8 to 1 which is much, much lower than most of the industries. So we have a very high level, high touch service for our clients. We know them really well. Uh We don't

Speaker 1: all have, you know, hundreds and hundreds of clients and so that ability to really understand everything that they're doing and everything going on in their financial life and knowing them personally, I think is really key to giving them good advice. And that's really been the Hallmark of our firm all over basically since it started.

Speaker 0: Well, John, thank you so much for joining us.

Speaker 1: Thank you. Thanks for having

Speaker 0: me and thank you for watching. Once again, that was John Snare managing partner at Bordeaux Wealth Advisors and I'm Jenna Dagenhart with asset TV.