Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saunders, MBA - Jeffrey Condren, CFP®, Senior Vice President & Wealth Advisor with Mesirow Wealth Management

Episode Date: December 3, 2025

Jeffrey Condren, CFP® is a Senior Vice President and Wealth Advisor in Mesirow Wealth Management. With two decades of experience in the financial industry, Jeff has solidified his reputation as a seasoned expert in wealth management and financial planning.Jeff joined Mesirow in 2015 and has since provided invaluable guidance to a diverse clientele, helping them navigate various economic landscapes and market fluctuationsJeff was named to the 2024 Best-in-State Top Next-Gen Wealth Advisors ranking by Forbes. He is the Immediate Past President of the Ravinia Associates Board and recently served as a member of the Executive Board of Trustees at the Ravinia Music FestivalJeff earned a Bachelor of Science in Finance from DePaul University and is a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER® professional. He holds the Series 7 and 66 FINRA licenses.Learn more: https://www.mesirow.com/capabilities/wealth-management/maniscalco-teamInfluential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saundershttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/influential-entrepreneurs-with-mike-saunders/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/jeffrey-condren-cfp-senior-vice-president-wealth-advisor-with-mesirow-wealth-management

Welcome to Influential Entrepreneurs, bringing you interviews with elite business leaders and experts, sharing tips and strategies for elevating your business to the next level. Here's your host, Mike Saunders. Hello and welcome to this episode of Influential Entrepreneurs. This is Mike Saunders, the authority positioning coach. Today we have with us Jeffrey Condren, who is the Senior Vice President and Wealth Advisor with Mezzaro wealth management. Jeffrey, welcome to the program. Hi, Mike. Thanks for having me. Hey, I'm looking forward to chatting with you, but before we dive into some of the questions

that you focus on in your firm and working with your clients, give us a little bit of your story and background. And now did you get into the financial services industry? Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. So I grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio, made my way up to Chicago for school. I am the son of an accountant, and I realize in high school business is exciting, but accounting is very boring. So I knew in college I wanted to go to business school, but didn't know exactly where that took me. I was fortunate enough during college an internship at a large financial services firm. Had a great experience there, continued on that path for a little while. Took kind of a side trip into consulting for a few years. Learned a lot,

but is very different on that side of the business first, kind of, if you will, this side of the financial services world. Made my way to my firm Mesero just over 10 and a half years ago, and I've been fortunate enough to work with a great team and work for a great firm. So awesome. Yeah, that's always neat. You kind of find a place and then you put in some roots and go from there. So that's really great. So tell us a little bit about your approach with working with clients. I know that sometimes you might think of, oh, we're just a firm that does it all. But you don't want to be looked at as a cookie cutter template firm. So what is your approach in serving your clients? Yeah, absolutely. So I'm a certified financial planner, CFP, as many people are familiar with. And I think that that's a great foundation to have whenever a client is looking to work with an advisor. But in my experience and my team experience, that only takes you so far. And what I mean by that is, you know, the textbooks that you study with the CFP tell you, you know, there are certain things, whether it's an asset allocation or how much savings you should have. Our experience has been sometimes, you know, that's the conventionalism. And we're not afraid to kind of challenge that. a little bit. It kind of seems silly to say this, but some of my most aggressive clients are widows who have enough money, who are living off Social Security, living off their requirement of institutions. The assets they have today aren't necessarily for them. They're maybe for the

next generation or the one after that. Whereas kind of the conventional wisdom would say, hey, this person should be, you know, 70, 80, 90 percent fixed income. Some of these clients are almost the opposite of that and they're 70, 80, 90 percent equity. Very similarly, I work with some young clients who, let's say their investment bankers, have great earnings, they take almost the opposite approach where they go, I work so hard for this money. I don't want to see it go down, even though they have the 20 or 30 years to let their investments grow. They say, hey, listen, I want a lot of fixed income because I work so hard. A lot of it's tied to my bonus. So we're not afraid to kind of look at things and say, hey, I know this is the conventional way

people would normally approach it. We sometimes take that contrarian point of view. say, hey, listen, this needs to be tailored to what you want, not what you've necessarily been taught or read about online or what your neighbor does type thing. Yeah, that's a really good point. And I think that sometimes when you take that contrarian view, as long as it resonates with logical resonance, it works. Meaning this, you can get too contrarian and make a recommendation to a client that they go, that just doesn't even sound right.

but I think that clients can understand a slightly contrarian recommendation and go, all right, I don't know all the ins and outserv, but it just feels right, makes sense. What's an example of one of those contrarian recommendations without getting into the weeds? But what would something like that look like? Yeah, so the easiest one is always kind of around the asset allocation. How much risk, you know, should I or shouldn't I take? That's kind of the most common one we get. But then a lot of times it comes down to should I own ABC security,

X, Y, Z security, you know, you name it. I had a recent conversation just last week where a friend of mine came out to me and goes, hey, should I be buying gold right now? And we just kind of, I kind of had a talk and I was like, why do you want to own gold? Like what is it? Because in the year of 2025 that we've had these first 11 months,

gold has already moved a lot as an example. So are you expecting that same move over the next 11 months, 12 months? So it's those types of things where he's hearing the headlines and going, I need to own this. And it's like, stop, let's take a step back. What's the reasoning behind why you want to own it? Well, that's a really, really good point. And I love that you mentioned that because if you just are an order taker and that client says,

I want gold, you say how much. And then you execute that, you know, transaction. You're not doing that client, that service because many times, in my opinion, and I'm not in your industry. But if you start making decisions off of the headlines, you're already four steps behind. because to your point about gold, you know, oh, I've been seeing the headlines for the last six months and I think it's a great idea. Well, it might have peaked and we might have already started going down and you're now buying and now it's going down. What you want to know is

let's take a look at some of the underlying indicators and where should I be buying because it's getting ready or on the upper trend and that becomes a contrarian view only because most people are reacting off of headlines. Right, right. And it's, it's, One of those things where, too, with our approach when we sit down and meet with someone and go through a financial plan with them, we remind them some of the biggest financial decisions they make have nothing to do with, should I own gold, should I buy this stock, should I do that? It's more, am I renting or buying, am I paying for my kids college, what am I saving year to year for retirement? Those have more of an impact, but it's a much longer term gain or vision than should I own this today because I saw the headline that. this is going to be the next thing or, oh, we're in a bubble today. I should sell and move out, right? So when you take that step back and you say, hey, if I told you the biggest decisions

you make have nothing to do with stocks, it kind of gets people to stop and think for a second. Yes. Yeah, that is a really good point. And it's almost like, hey, look, in the ages between whatever, 30 and 40, you should be thinking this way. 40 to 50, you should be starting to think, okay, well, what is retirement plan going to look like? After you hit age, whatever. or 50, 55, we need to start thinking about pumping the brakes. And then at 860, we need to start making some moves. Whatever those timelines are, I think that really brings some clarity. And then when you're in those stages of those ages, now it's like, what do we do about

them? But you need to have that kind of broad perspective. And I've heard the analogy many times, you know, it's like climbing a mountain. You know, you're striving and gaining, but then it's the decumulation or the coming down the mountain that it brings so many of those treacherous. decisions like, you know, hey, what am I going to do about handling inflation or taxes or, you know, required minimum distributions? What are some of those stages you're bringing out to your clients to be aware of? Well, some of them, what I see a lot today with families, especially as you

kind of talk about that, I'll say 45 to 55 is that planning for college with families. Yeah. Because the cost of education has kind of skyrocketed over the last, however many years now. and that's one of those where maybe their parents, so the grandparents in this situation, if you will, maybe paid for the parents' education and for them to be able to go to school. And the parents have this expectation that they want to do the same for their kids. Financially, that may not be the best decision for them, depending on what they want for their retirement. This could be a whole other podcast or a whole other conversation, if you will, but, you know, an 18-year-old right or wrong, again, I'm not going down that path, but right or wrong, has the ability to take out $400,000 to go

pay for an education. If someone wanted to have, let's just say, a $2 million retirement portfolio and ends at 1.6, no bank is going to lend them $400,000 just so they can say they got to $2 million. So I kind of reframe that discussion of what they're going to pay for their children as far as their education. And that family conflict is sometimes a hard thing to get over because it is such a crucial time where you have a child or multiple children and they want to go to college and they want to have that experience and the parents feel the obligation, but in some aspects, they may be harming themselves with their retirement plan. And then you talk about, hey, I'm getting close to 60. I want to start slowing the brakes. It's like, well, yes, but

what are your expectations for college? What are your expectations if you're going to help pay for a wedding if that's in their future? What are the expectations if you want to put money down for a house for the children? Like, you know, so it's hard because these things, these emotions come out and it's never, you know, money and emotions tie in so much. And, trying to help a family have the conversation without it turning into a conflict is one that always is a little difficult and one you kind of tightrope walk on, if you will. But what I've seen is successful families don't eliminate the conflict. They use the structure and say, okay, hey, here's what we're comfortable being able to do.

Here's what it would mean for you. Here's what it means for us. And when you start to have those conversations, especially the longer amount of time you have to have those conversations, the better it works out. If you have it, oh, hey, you're applying to school A and school B. Well, we can't afford school B. Sorry, that's out. Like, that's a hard conversation to have with a child. But if you have it.

You should have had that conversation way earlier and maybe even planned ahead with putting some money into the proverbial buckets or envelopes, so to speak, you know, go, hey, we know, we know college is coming up. You're in middle school. And we're not even going to think about what school yet. But we know that we want to help out. So we know we want to start setting some money. aside and to your point about the chunk that it takes do you just pull it right out of your

retirement account or do you make other plans because punching that hole in the bucket of your retirement account pulling money out just to pay for college that might not be the best approach and there could be some options out there for whatever that might look like and there's never the beauty of most decisions there's never one decision that is the you know best decision for everybody because you could say to family a oh what you need to to do is this and Family B, because of their circumstances, the solution could look a whole lot different. Right. And that's what I think makes it difficult for a lot of families, that there isn't necessarily a correct answer and necessarily a wrong answer. There's so much of our life where,

okay, I know if I eat well, I'm going to feel well, I'll be fit. If I don't, I know the consequences, right? You don't feel the consequences the next day if you're spent too much on your child's education, right? It's something you're not going to feel for five or ten years down the line. So we talk a lot about the tradeoffs from the parent level and from the child level when it comes to things like college education. Yep. Yeah, that's a really good point. So let's go ahead and talk a little bit further about what are some of those other types of family conversations that might come up, whether it's a like we mentioned about the college, but I know that sometimes whatever percentage of businesses out there are owned by a family.

So they're a family-owned business. They might have mom, dad, uncle, brother, son, daughter working in the business. Then that creates a whole other set of conversation, right? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there's all sorts of things when it come to incorporating the next generation. Again, you talk about the realities of having the conversation within the family of going to college. Hey, okay, the child's out of college. What's their expectation with maybe working in the family business?

you know, do they understand what this business means, not just to the family, but also to the employees. And a big thing that we talk about, too, whether family business paying for college, you know, equal doesn't mean fair and fair doesn't mean equal. So an easy example, if child A, you know, if a family has two children, child A goes to private school and the family pays for it and child B goes to public school and the family pays for it, you know, those are not equal payments. But if the parents and children agree that we will handle college, that was what was agreed to, and that's how it worked out. It's kind of the same thing with the business, you know, just because it's a family business doesn't necessarily mean you're going to be the next VP that you're going to be the next head of, you know, this part of the business.

It means, you know, taking time, going through the steps of the business, understanding what the roles are. And in some instances, it does make sense for the children to not be involved. And that's also not a fun conversation. Yeah, yeah. But as with most things, when you can look down the road a few steps or a few stages and predict what could happen and then make some contingency plans, then if it does happen, you're ready. If it doesn't happen, you're ahead of the game. Yeah, absolutely.

And contingency planning goes a long way, both in business and with family. You talk about, you know, creating an estate plan, making sure that who's going to handle these assets, regardless of the age of the children, who's going to handle the business, if something would happen to the owner and founder, right? That's not a one and done conversation. That's something that needs to be at least high level reviewed every three to five years. You just kind of make sure this still is the path because in any one year something may not change, but over the course of several years, a lot of things may change, including who are kind of the key people at the company.

Maybe someone's left. Maybe someone's come in. That's not a part of the family. That is now important. maybe someone who decided not to join the family business out of college has now decided to step in and take a role. You know, that changes the dynamics and it sometimes means reviewing the structure of how things are going to be going forward. Yeah, and you know, I've actually done some reading in the industry for like exit planning. So when you own a business and you want to, you know, look at getting out or retiring or selling, it might not be I have a valuation.

I want to sell it for that valuation. give me a check. It might not be that because most of the time that's what business owners think about. You know, I want to sell my business for X number of dollars. But it could be that if you really dug in deep, you really love the business you built. You just don't like the minutiae. So maybe you create some SOPs and operational efficiencies and you do just one or two bullet points of the things you love doing, bring in other people to run all the other stuff. And you still feel like you're retired, but you're still drawing in that. revenue stream. So I think that what you just said, there's planning ahead and what if and what

if. There's a lot of scenarios and none of them are the only option for every single business. Right. And none of them have to do with the product or the service you're offering that one day, right? And you brought up a good point that I think sometimes business owners often overlook, which is getting that valuation right. Because sometimes they're not looking to sell. someone comes up to them at a, you know, a show and an exhibition and says, hey, we're a competitor from another market. We're interested in your business. What do you value it at?

And there's times where there is the emotions tied to it where, okay, the business is worth 10, 15, 20 million, but because of the ties, they go, well, I think my business is worth $50 million. And the competitor is like, no way. Or they're not prepared at all because they've never, the idea of selling the business has never even come up. So their poor preparation and planning often leads to some issues as well. And so that in our experience, the unrealistic pricing is one of the biggest reasons a deal stalls and never advances and never goes any, you know, never gets to a finish line is because the owner themselves aren't prepared to sell, have never thought about it, don't want to, which in some cases it's fine.

But at the same time, you need to be prepared because what if that offer comes that you can't refuse, hey, this may set your family up in a different way that you couldn't have expected. I agree. And without getting into the weeds of that, what you just said brought up another thought for me is there might be some financial moves with some financial products or strategies that might need to be put into place in that business well ahead of a potential sale that at the last minute, like, oh, we're looking to sell in the next 12 months. What should we be doing? Well, you could have made this move, but that takes 24 to 36 months. So what are some of those kind of thoughts along the lines of maybe there should could be. some financial investment or strategies or retirement plan kind of ESOP type moves that could even make the business look more attractive to sell, but they need to be done well ahead of that conversation. Yeah, absolutely. There's a ton of options that are out there for clients. And this goes kind of back to some of that estate planning that I briefly touched on. So, you know, say you sell the business, $50 million, whatever it is. Again, it's going back to kind of what are the values, what are the expectations within the family, right? If it's a first generation owned

business owner who sells it, you know, do they want to create a donor-advised fund? Do they want to become charitable? Is this, hey, I want to set up things for my family? Do they want to donate back to schools and universities? Right. Getting into the taxation of stuff, whether they're S-Corp, LLC, I mean, there's all different types of things that need to be thought of beforehand. And this goes back to making sure you have the right preparations to know what your business is worth.

There's also deals that, you know, we're getting here to the end of December. where depending on how the business is structured tax-wise, it may make sense to split the sale between two calendar years. So selling it December 31st and up for half, selling the other half January 2nd of the next year. But there's all sorts of different estate planning ideas. Trust is kind of like the biggest, you know, broadest thing to say here is the shuts that can be set up.

You know, if you're worried about children or how money may impact them or they're too young that you don't want them to have direct access to the money. There are certain trusts that can be set up to make sure that this type of influx of money doesn't ruin their lives or change their values. So that planning, again, even 12 months, I would say, is a very short term. You need two to three years minimum to kind of make sure you've thought about it, know what you want to do, the structure's in place, and you're ready to take action when the time comes. Yeah, 100%.

Yeah, that's some really good points. And I think the main thing to keep in mind is none of these, whether it was the college planning scenario, the business, family business, exit planning scenario, none of these can be done with a quick Google search or AI recommendation, you know, and I think a lot of times people feel like, oh, I'm just going to, well, that might be nice to understand some things like that in context, but you need someone to sit down with you, understand what you need deeply, intimately, with all of the what ifs factored in. then give some guidance. So that's what you're providing. And Jeffrey, if someone is interested in learning more about what you guys are doing and then reaching out and connecting with you, what's the best way that they can do that? Yeah. So our website's probably the easiest way to connect with me. It's mesero.m. M-E-S-I-R-O-W.com. Excellent. Well, we'll have a direct link in the show notes as well. And I really appreciate you coming on. It's been a real pleasure chatting with you. Thanks, Mike. It's fun chatting with you too.

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