How Prime Quadrant Is Solving the Biggest Problem in Financial Services with Mo Lidsky – EP 265

Justin Donald: What's up, Mo? Good to have you on the show.

Mo Lidsky: Good to be here, Justin. Thank you for having me.

Justin Donald: Yeah. Well, this is going to be a lot of fun because I think you have an incredible story, but I also love kind of highlighting people and companies that I work with that I've done business with or that I've hired in some capacity, obviously, Prime Quadrant being one of those companies. And I've had the pleasure of working with you here this calendar year of 2025, and we're always kind of iterating and reiterating on like how big it can go and what else we can do. So, I was like, "Let's talk about this,” so anyone that wants to tune in can kind of hear some of the cool stuff that we're up to.

Mo Lidsky: Yeah. And like, listen, I have incredible admiration for what you've been building, and I am even more excited about what the future brings for Lifestyle Investor and some of the other enterprises that you're involved with.

Justin Donald: Well, it's so fun having this group of individuals, these like moment makers and big movers. They just do these epic things in the world. And I love, like, having them in my orbit, and then I love exposing them to the cool things that you guys are up to because I really do feel like Prime Quadrant has solved for a huge need in a marketplace, in a differentiated way than what most of these multifamily offices do, or these RIAs do. Like, I feel like you guys are a special, differentiated breed that solves for higher quality problems at what I think is an attractive price point. It's not cheap, but you kind of get what you pay for in this space.

Mo Lidsky: Well, I think that for most people, it's like they wish they got what they paid for. Then, unfortunately, the financial service industry, for many years, was known for more rent seeking than value creation. And there was a, I remember when I was getting into this business, in a previous context, I had a regional automotive group, and there was this survey. I may be butchering it, but I think it's called Emerson, maybe something else, but it was a global trust survey. And every single year, they measure the trust of companies. They measure the trust of industries, they measure the trust of countries, and they literally index. Edelman. Sorry. The name is Edelman. Edelman Trust Index, I think it's called.

And I remember for so many years, for so many years, I thought the automotive industry was like the most perverse and problematic. But then you get introduced to finance and you're like, "Oh my God.”

Justin Donald: They're even worse. It is so corrupt on so many levels, so much back scratching, so much back-scene handshaking.

Mo Lidsky: And it's a story of incentives like behaviors go where incentives flow, and that's kind of how the industry has gotten to where it's gotten. But anyway, I don't want to go down that rabbit hole unless that's something you want to unpack.

Justin Donald: Well, I actually would like to unpack that a bit because I do think that most people, the financial services are a disservice to many, because expectations don't meet reality. And I think a lot of people are sold a bill of sales or a bill of goods that it doesn't line up with how it was supposed to be. So, I'd love for you to even get into like, “Hey, financial services’ general rule is this. Here at Prime Quadrant, we do things differently.” But I'd love to know some of the pain points of why you do things differently.

Mo Lidsky: Well, yeah, and at some point, I'd be happy to kind of give you a little bit more background on how I even got into this, and that that was the catalyst. But if you think about it, at its core, there is a fundamental flaw about the way that financial services are being promoted, right? And part of that promotion, and at least the intellectually dishonest part of that promotion, is again going back to incentives, really tied into the way that people get compensated. So, because the default way in which people get compensated in the world of finance is through assets under management or through some other kind of AUM-based construct, all of a sudden, now what's important to everybody in the business of providing financial services, or ostensibly in the business of providing advice, are actually very much biased by where the assets sit and what kind of transactions do people engage in.

So, when you really take a step back and you think about it, the client is the money. The client is not the individual because the individual is kind of like the chaperone over the money, but I just want to move. I got to move that money into these coffers or these coffers or those coffers, or into this transaction or that transaction, because if you don't, then I don't get paid. And so, that creates this narrative that needs to be told by every representative of every institution, which is I don't care what bank you walk into or what financial advisory shop you walk into, if the assets have to sit there for them to make money, they have to then convince you that right there on their shelf their product set is effectively the monopoly of all good ideas in the world and somebody that's across the street or across the border or across the ocean doesn't have something better. Even if they knew about it, they're structurally disincented from telling you about it.

That sounds a lot less like advice and a lot more like capital placement. And there's lots of good value in intelligently placing capital. And there's lots of good value in being a great allocator of capital and being a great steward of capital as an asset manager. But what you do is create this disconnect between asset management and advice. And I think when people think they're buying one, but getting the other, that's where a lot of the problems come into the equation. And really, there are many reasons for it, but one of the reasons that it continues to perpetuate is because there is this disconnect. There's this like informational asymmetry between the buyer or the seller of financial services and the buyer of financial services.

And, I mean, years and years ago, there was a guy, I think he won some prize for this paper, a guy economist named George Akerlof. If I'm not mistaken, I think he was married. His wife was the former Head of the Treasury. What's her name? But, anyway, so he wrote a paper called The Market for Lemons, which basically says that whichever market you come into, wherever there is like a meaningful discrepancy between the information that's held by the seller and the information that's held by the buyer, there will be, unfortunately, uneven distribution of outcomes. And said another way, the customer will usually be screwed, and they won't necessarily be screwed because it's like a fraud or somebody is nefarious. So, they'll just get a lot of mediocrity or worse. And when we realized this and realized that that was a fundamental problem in the industry, we wanted to find ways to solve for that.

Justin Donald: Yeah. I love that. And I definitely want to get more in the weeds on some of what you're solving for. But before we do, your story's fascinating, and the fact that you ended up in financial services is interesting because you certainly didn't start there, right? So, you started an education company, an auto restoration company, an e-commerce company, a microfinance company. So, how on earth did you get to this point where you're like, “Hey, Prime Quadrant is the new path.” You've had some exits. Tell us about your early life, early professional life.

Mo Lidsky: So, yeah, I mean, a lot of different businesses in there, and the only common denominator across all of the businesses that I've been in was that I had no business being in any of them. So, I think like, look, I mean, my backstory is, I was a kid immigrant from the former Soviet Union. My family, we were refugees for a number of years and then ended up in the US. My family struggled quite a bit when we arrived, and they could never kind of find their bearings financially and struggled to put food on the table. And I realized that at the early age of about 11 or 12, I felt obliged to pitch in. Otherwise, we had a lot of people living in a one-bedroom apartment, and the prospects of staying in that apartment were uncertain.

So, I would go up and down retail plazas and office buildings and single-family homes, knocking on doors asking for work. And so, I kind of became that kid in the neighborhood that was just, I mean, maybe annoyingly industrious, but you know. And so, I started all these little weird and wacky businesses, and I mean, anything you could cut, shovel, clean, deliver, whatever it may have been, whatever I could have done to earn a buck, I did. The good fortune of starting my first company that had any real like monetizable equity when I was 17 and was kind of blessed to sell it when I was 19. And then the second company was a colossal disaster. And then the third company was, actually, again successful. And that was the regional automotive group.

But I think to get to your story, and how I ended up in finance, really by the time I was in my mid-twenties, I had several liquidity events and so that forced me to engage with the world of the advisory world, the world of wealth management and sort of the likes of Goldman and JP Morgan and Credit Suisse and BofA and UBS, Citi, and so on. And so, I initially started with that cohort in the US, and then in the mid-2000s, I married a Canadian, and sort of that kind of what brought me to Canada, because she didn't love being away from her family for the time we lived in the States. And so, I got involved with a whole bunch of advisory groups on this side of the border in Canada.

So, I had, on both sides of the border, call it, a half a dozen advisors around me. And in my naive little brain, I was kind of diversified across all of them. Again, I wasn't terribly focused on my portfolios. I wasn't terribly focused on my investments. I was focused on the operating companies. I was focused on real estate. And we had, over time, accumulated a fairly significant number of operating companies and a significant amount of industrial real estate. I guess where all of that came to a head was if you spoke to me, in the summer of 2008, you probably would've met an arrogant little bastard that thought they were God's gift to wealth creation. And then if you talked to me in the summer or fall of 2009, you would've met a different person because, in that period, I managed to eviscerate over 85% of my net worth.

Justin Donald: Oh, my goodness.

Mo Lidsky: I was like, I made every single mistake you can. I did every silly decision that you could engage in. I sold good assets at terrible times. I doubled down and threw good money after bad assets. Like, it was just one thing after another. And notwithstanding how many obscenely foolish decision I made during that time, the one thing that I thought I got right was I hired all these advisors because they had fancy pedigrees and fancy offices and fancy suits and all that good stuff, and I'm just a country bumpkin immigrant from Cleveland, Ohio. But what shocked me, however, was that when I kind of looked across all of these advisors, all dozen or so of them ended up in the same place with the same narrative and the same outcome.

And I was like, "Well, how does that happen?” Like, I know that I'm clueless, but these people, they should know something, you know? And I guess, at that point in time, when I was reflecting on it, I thought, "Okay. Well, one of three things had to be true, right?” Like, either I really just do not understand how to leverage the world of financial services, or I have this unique ability to surround myself with like the village idiots of financial services, or there's something fundamentally flawed around the way that financial services are being delivered or wealth advisory services are being delivered. And I said, "Okay. Well, I got to get to the bottom of that. Which is it?”

So, I went on a little bit of a journey up and down Wall Street and Bay Street initially to find new advisors. But then the more people I met, and already I'm like semi-skeptical. So, the more curious I got, and eventually just became a whole hog obsession, and then I ended up walking around for about 9 or 10 months. And during that 9 or 10 months, I met like 300 plus people. I met 300 plus people, interviewed them all, every different form, and I was really trying to understand like who's who in the zoo, and how does this whole machine work? And, at the end, I still hadn't hired a single advisor, and that was crazy because I am the least fussy person you will ever meet. And not only that, all dozen or so of advisors that I had previously, I effectively hired them in the first meeting.

But the fact is I couldn't bring myself to hire another one. And as I was like reflecting on it, like, "Is this just paralysis or like, what's really going on?” What stuck out for me was there were a few things I could not get past. I could not get past the fact that 100% of the people that I met were, as I described earlier, either in the business of gathering assets or transacting with assets, and that nobody was providing truly unbiased, conflict-free advice. That’s what I got.

Justin Donald: That's a huge red flag that the vast majority of people in financial services, money management, they are incentivized based on making decisions with your money. So, you win, you lose. They still make money.

Mo Lidsky: So, that was the other thing, right? The way the compensation worked in the industry was if I have a lawyer, I have an accountant, or I have a nutritionist, or whoever, or like some kind of coach, they render their services, they get paid for their services, right?

Justin Donald: That’s right.

Mo Lidsky: But if I am an advisor and I do theoretically nothing, and the market just goes up at its historical average, well, I get an 8% pay bump every single year from now until kingdom come. Now, I know that the market doesn't go in a linear fashion, but the point is that over time, somebody gets increasingly well compensated. But what was even more frustrating to me was if I had a liquidity event, and let's say I had a million or two sitting with some advisor, and then all of a sudden I had $20 million liquidity event, and I threw that $20 million into this advisor's accounts. And I'm like, "Well, what are you going to do with it now?” And he's like, "Well, you have great stocks and bonds. We're just going to buy more of them.”

And I walk away from that exchange, and I'm thinking, “Hmm, he did nothing but press a button, added no incremental value, and his compensation just went up 10X.” Like, where is the equity in that, especially since I'm not even sure on what basis to actually hold them accountable? And so, I think the way that they did kind of the incumbent compensation model. That was number one. Number two, the other thing that I found interesting was, again, this is 15 years ago or even more now 16, 17 years ago. The markets have changed, the opportunity sets have changed, but at the time, all of my advisors, they were completely fixated on stocks and bonds instruction. It was another kind of publicly available and liquid vehicles.

If I wanted something in the private markets, if I wanted something, buy a building or an operating company or engage in some kind of credit strategy or some infrastructure, whatever, or some venture, they were again structurally disincented from me engaging in that because it meant money leaving the ecosystem. And, in most cases, most advisors didn't have access to it. And even now, today, where advisors start to have access to a broader range of asset classes and strategies, they have access to it in a slightly different way than makes good investment sense. And so, there were these issues that sort of got in the way of even well-intentioned good advisors being able to add the kind of value that they probably would want to add because the structure or the market or kind of the organizational structure which they operate actually inhibited them from doing so.

And the other things that I thought were kind of interesting was I think it also created silos where advisors start focusing on assets that are sometimes a relatively insignificant portion of somebody's net worth. So, think about lots of families have operating assets or operating companies. Lots of families have sort of legacy assets or inherited or whatever else. And then they have like an investible pool of assets. And then they come to advising and they're like, "Well, I have this investible pool of assets,” and the advisor's like, "Okay, great,” and then do all kinds of planning and all kinds of strategy around there. But that little pool of asset could be like 15%, 20%, 30% of the aggregate. Even if it's 50%, like you got to at least be paying attention to the other side and how these things intersect and interact.

And what I've realized, again with my own experience, where a lot of the advisors sort of failed me, was that they just weren't paying attention at all to all of my real estate, my operating companies. They weren't paying attention at all to my cross-border dynamics within credit arrangements and all the other things that I had going on in my world. And because of that, I take full ownership for every mistake that I made. That was entirely me. But, man, would it have been nice if I had actually gotten the kind of advice that I would've liked to receive.

Justin Donald: Yeah. You paint such a great picture of kind of what's going on in that world. And to even take it one step further, years ago, it's funny, like if you break it down, the wealthiest people look at the billionaires, look at the centimillionaires, look at the demi-billionaires. We're talking bare minimum 45%, usually upwards of 55% to 60% of their net worth is in alternative investments. And that was the opposite of what Wall Street does, did, what they want to do. But, as they've seen this demand for alts shift, they've added some of these things onto their platform. So, now it's like, "Well, hey, now we have alternative investments. Here are the deals that we can do.” And all these deals are deals that they get a kickback on.

And so, it's really funny, like I've heard this from a few mastermind members, but one specifically, one Lifestyle Investor said, "It's really funny. I started noticing this pattern because I kept bringing the Lifestyle Investor deals to my wealth manager. And he kept telling me how they weren't good deals, and I should do these other deals.” And I said, "Have you noticed why that's the case? Like, have you thought through this?” And he is like, "Yeah, I think I figured it out.” He goes, "Because now I've been in long enough to see the deals that you guys are doing have actually done really well. They've actually outperformed the deals that they were recommending to me.” He's like, "So, the only reason that he would tell me no is because he doesn't get a kickback on me putting money in these other deals, or I'm pulling money from what he's being paid or she's being paid on assets under management.”

And so, there's just such a disincentive, it's such a misalignment of financial advice, like, you're compensated this way, but to be unbiased, like you just can't. You're compensated this way. It's hard for you to make a recommendation that limits or eliminates your financial incentive, what you could make. And so, it is so funny how many wealth managers have said, "Oh, don't do that. That's risky. I would do this deal.” And if you look at the numbers, we're outperforming them day in and day out. And that's it, misaligned incentives.

Mo Lidsky: And I think it comes, originally, I think. And if you think of going back to first principles, we all know we want unbiased advice. The problem is, and this is a real problem, is that if somebody doesn't have a critical mass of assets, they're not prepared to pay for sophisticated, unbiased advice. So, the reality is for most of the market, when you think about like the retail market, mass affluence, the economics aren't there, or the business model isn't really there to provide pre-AI, maybe post-AI, and as AI evolves and becomes more reliable, maybe this will change. But in a pre-AI era and certainly, pre-reliable AI era, there was no way you're going to get the most brilliant minds and private equity and real estate and credit and capital markets to get on the phone with a $2 million investor. They just won't.

And they'll have to pay a quarter of their portfolio just to spend any real time with them, right? So, what I think the way the industry has dealt with it has actually created this bifurcation. There was like, call it dumb money, which is retail. And then there was like smart money, which was like institutional. And institutional was like the pensions, the sovereign wealth funds, the insurance companies, the large family offices, there are some of the endowments and so on and so forth, right? And so, when I looked at this ecosystem, and I saw this like bifurcation, I realized there's like this massive space in the middle. And so, what problem would need to be solved in order to actually address the space in the middle?

What I realized is like when I looked at the analog of peers who had billions of dollars and they had tens of people in their family office effectively doing the real work that needed to get done for them, and they could justify it, well, what does somebody who has $10 million, $20 million, $30 million, $50 million, $75 million, $80 million, $100 million, maybe even $200 million, they have enough money that they should not be doing anything resembling what dumb money, right, the retail world does, but they don't have enough to hire those tens of people in the single family office of a multi-billion dollar investor.

Justin Donald: And just for like I want backstory for people that are listening that are like, "Well, why couldn't you do it?” the average single-family office, meaning an office that you are hiring to manage just your own family's money, right, and many of the other aspects of your family, that the range is generally $6 million to $12 million a year to run it, right? So, when you look at those numbers, most people cannot afford it. So, that's why there is this big gap.

Mo Lidsky: Yeah, exactly. What you're describing is somebody that actually wants an institutional quality family office where they have great controls, great research, great origination, great underwriting, great monitoring, great reporting, all those things at the world-class level. So, I guess what I was really trying to solve for was, how do you give somebody 90% of the benefit of having that institutional quality family office, but at less than 10% of the cost? And the only way that I was able to sort of think that through was, but if you are able to take fixed costs and actually amortize fixed costs across a number of families, and then you take the variable cost, the incremental units of time that any given family will have, well, with every family that joins, you actually reduce the price point on average per person.

So, when you sort of started this conversation, you said that they do this at extraordinary value, at a very reasonable price. We didn't set out to be the cheapest option. It's certainly a business strategy. I don't think it's a sustainable business strategy. I think we just set out to say, "How do we make sure that we're always offering way more value than we're getting paid for? And how do we make sure that instead of convincing the investor that we're the geniuses behind some curtain, we're the wizards of Oz that could actually make the magic of their portfolio work? How do we empower those families, those investors, those individuals to become the most sophisticated versions of themselves?” And so, that was kind of the genesis of our business.

And again, like fast forward to today, like when we started, we had virtually no clients. And it was just an idea, but the idea resonated, and thank God, like we have hundreds of families that we're privileged to work with today. And we have offices across Canada and the US. And so, it's still early days, but I think that there is this pervasive desire for people to think about what other options are available to them. There's now a recognition. Most people, the way they dealt with their holdcos and the way they deal with their opcos. Like, they're worlds apart, right? Like, if anybody, and it doesn't matter, everybody who built a big business was at some point a small business, right?

And I don't care how you categorize small businesses. I don't care if it's like 5 million, 10 million, 15 million, 25 million, 50 million, I don't care what it is, but at any one of those price points, anybody that got to become a big business they were paying attention to their P&Ls. They were paying attention to their balance sheets. They were being proactive. They weren't being reactive. They had discipline. They had accountability. They had a rigor around what they did. But the second that they take that business that they sold or the liquidity that they've created through it, and that money moves from the opco into the holdco, all of a sudden, all that rigor, accountability, proactivity, discipline, out the window. And it's like, “I'll quarter my desk,” and, "Who do I know?” And, “Oh yeah, I grew up with this guy, and he's good.” And you're like, "What?”

Justin Donald: Oh, we see it all the time. It's like, "Well, I'm a great entrepreneur. I just had a big exit, so now I know how to invest in all these other people's companies.” And then they go belly up. All these businesses die because entrepreneurs generally are not great investors.

Mo Lidsky: Yeah. And I think entrepreneurs are great risk takers. They could be great operators. They could be great salespeople. I mean, everybody builds a company because they have a sort of a unique edge in some domain, and they often have a whole bunch of people on their team that compensate them in a whole bunch of other domains because they sure as hell couldn't do it. I mean, again, before the age of AI, nobody thought you could build a billion-dollar unicorn with one person, right? I mean, maybe now who knows? But the idea was anybody that built a serious enterprise did it with a lot of people that compensated for a lot of their weaknesses.

But then they go off and start investing their money, and they're like, "Well, I don't have any of those people around me,” but of course, I will be good at all those domains. And it's silly and people don't treat the capital with the same rigor and thoughtfulness that they would, if that capital was just a business, and it is the same going concern in just a different shape.

Justin Donald: Well, it's really fun seeing how far you guys have come. I want to dive in even deeper here in just a moment. But it's really cool seeing all the families that you now serve. You guys throw what I would call one of the best annual conferences and events I've ever attended, and I attend a ton of these, a lot of family office events or investment groups. You guys just crush it, and the ability to get like big-name people. Last year, I remember, you not only had Eli Manning there, but you did a special lunch where I got to hang out with him, sit next to him at lunch, pick his brain, which was really fun. But you had titans of professional sports teams there. And same thing this year. I think you got the CIO of Blackstone coming, just big names, and it is really cool seeing what you've built, and I can't wait to come hang out with you in Toronto here literally in a few days.

Mo Lidsky: Yeah. Now, actually, that's a passion project. We have a charitable foundation that I've had a charitable foundation since I was in my early twenties. And I've always been deeply passionate about it, a number of areas right now. Mental health is kind of an area that we're involved with in a number of dimensions. And years and years ago, I remember, we used to create these gatherings where we would have former presidents, former prime ministers, heads of the largest asset managers in the world, entertainers, athletes, and so on. We'd have them just by virtue of our network, of our relationships, and we bring our families together and see what they could learn from each other and what they could learn from these incredible individuals.

And I was sitting at one of the hospital boards, I was sitting on, the CEO of the hospital, he heard about this event, and he said he made the pitch. This is 14 years ago now. He said, "Instead of giving us whatever, it's $50,000 a year or something like that, why don't you just fund the event that you do and let us actually raise money through it. Bring us into the room. Give us a platform. And we're sure we can make more than $50,000 through your event, and it would be a great source of leverage for us.” And I thought, "Why not?” Anyway, we started that.

Justin Donald: That’s cool. That’s smart.

Mo Lidsky: And so, yeah, it wasn't my idea. But we did it that first year, and it was kind of funny. That first year, we had a bunch of phenomenal speakers. I don't want to mention any names because of what I'm about to tell you, but what happened was 48 hours before the event. It was Hurricane Katrina. And the FAA basically shut down everybody. And most of our speakers have their own planes, and they fly in. But you couldn't even take your own bird to come to Toronto. So, we had to recreate the whole thing. Anyways, we still raised about $0.5 million, and it was still a wonderfully successful event. And our families loved it, but the whole thing was recreated. And after that, weirdly notwithstanding, we didn't get any of the impressive people in that first year.

But the community that was created in that room, I think it was only about 100 single-family offices at that time. Basically, the next year they told all their friends, we had 200 the year after or 300, and finally, the year four, we just basically shut it down at 400, and it's been more or less, well, it's 400 and then with a waiting list. And so, this year, yeah, excited. Next week, we have Gore. We have Clinton. We have Ashton Kutcher. We have lots and lots of really phenomenal and fascinating people, as you said, the CIO of BlackRock, and a handful of others, who I'm looking forward to learning from. And I'm really glad that you're coming.

Justin Donald: Well, I just love it because it's such a value-add to your clients. And by the way, it's not just the speakers. Like, I get value from the speakers, but there are 400 family offices that are there represented. Every person I talked to, I learned something cool from. This last time I'm like, "Man, the whole ecosystem's incredible.” So, I'm just happy to be a participant, get to be a fly on the wall here in some top-level, really fascinating conversations, really strategic conversations about what people are doing in their business or with their portfolio. So, well done and hats off to you. A nice value add.

Mo Lidsky: Thank you, Justin. Appreciate that.

Justin Donald: Yeah. So, when you look at Prime Quadrant, I'd love to talk a little bit about how you differentiate yourself. So, you've talked a little bit about how you solve for that middle tier, right? So, not institutional, not retail. You're in the middle. You appeal to ultra-high net worth individuals, and this could be varying different net worth points in people's lives, but you offer services different to different families, and so it depends what someone needs. One of the things I love that you mentioned before, you said, “Hey, Wall Street and financial services, they have an egregious model where they're making assets under management, AUM, or they're making their money based on a carry, but they're always incentivized to make money on not their own money.

And I love that you guys are fee-based. So, in most businesses and most financial service operations, wealth management, there is a bias. If someone's recommending something to you, they are being compensated on it. So, to me it's like, "Well, what is the truth here? Like, do you want me in this because it's good, or do you want me in this because you make money on me putting my money in?” So, you guys are fee-only. I'm a huge proponent of that. But I'd love for you to talk about what you guys do and differentiating aspects of Prime Quadrant.

Mo Lidsky: Yeah. And I'll clarify that. First of all, yes, 100%. And I do believe that every relationship should be structured in a way tailored to the needs of the individual, and the pricing should correspond to the scope of work. And so, whether that's a retainer model or some other comparable model, which is really what we have for 95% of the revenue that we generate, there are incidents and situations where they, and as I mentioned certainly with lower socioeconomic classes, but there are other examples where an AUM construct or a carry construct actually is in the long-term best interest of the investors. So, I don't want to be overly dogmatic about this, but I think that the more important piece is less about, I mean, the incentives drive everything, so it's important as a kind of background to kind of remove the noise that could be impeding on good advice.

But I think fundamentally, what I view our role is to help people effectively give people the highest probability of achieving whatever it is that they want to do. And the only way you do that is by being exceptional at helping them articulate what they want because a lot of people, they can't even start to articulate like, "What is it that I want?” It's not a question people have the liberty and luxury of asking themselves very often, and even when they do, the first response that they'll provide is usually not the true response. It’s almost like, “Yeah, I think that's what I want,” or, "Well, this is what somebody in my situation wants,” or, well, like people will always walk in here and they'll be like, it's like, "What do you want?” “Well, I want the highest return for the lowest amount of risk.” Like, everybody says the same generic thing, right?

But that's not actually what they want. What they want is usually something it could be, “I want a deeper relationship with my children. I want to be doing things that are meaningful. I want to have freedom for the first time in my life. I'd like to experience joy in a way that I just haven't given myself.” Like, these are all fundamental wants. And when you figure out what somebody wants and you start to figure out what stands in the way between where they are and what they want, and then when you figure out, okay, once you get that, what are the tools? And we talked earlier, financial capital tools, human or social capital tools, and maybe even spiritual capital tools that actually could be sort of organized around the individual to give them the highest probability of what they want. And to give them the lowest probability of ever touching what they want to avoid.

Because those are two really important things. And being crystal clear on that is important. So, it's important to be when you have a product or you have a series of products, it's like that Maslow's Hammer bias, right? Or Maslow's Hammer phenomenon, where the expression goes, to a man with a hammer, every tool looks like a nail, right? Or every problem looks like a nail, whatever the expression is. But the idea is that the starting point is never about what you have and always about where somebody is and where they want to go. And if you could be good at really, really focused on identifying their point A, which is where they are today, and identifying their point B, which you want to go, and you don't have any prejudice about which tools you use to get there. What ends up happening is you just become better positioned to help them get there.

And so, I think the whole construct around fees starts to bleed into limitations and toolkits and also biases around what you use to solve which problems. And so, I think, that is a big part of our work. And it's not elegant. It's not like something you could put in a nice deck and say, "We help you get what you want,” because it sounds cheesy when you do that, but that's actually what it's about. And the other thing that I would say is a big piece is education because a lot of people, they either don't know what they don't know, or like most humans have biases that maybe serve them well in one context, but really do them no service in another, right?

Like, I mean, how many times have you seen like just a hard-driving entrepreneur, creating incredible things? Everything is efficient and effective, da, da, da, da, da. And then they come home and they behave the same way and they have like no relationship with their spouse or their kids, right? Because what they're doing is they're bringing the biases that have created success in one domain into another, and it just falls flat. And so, how do we help people, actually, without necessarily being psychologists, although we have some on our staff, without necessarily being therapists, although we often play the part, but, yeah, how do we really help them get to what's true and meaningful and purposeful and wishful and necessary for them? And then how do you connect, kind of construe everything else around that to give him the highest probability of getting to it?

Justin Donald: Yeah, I love that. And one of the things I want to do is dive into the benefits that I see in working with Prime Quadrant. So, I kind of want to take this from two different standpoints. One is like my family and what we're doing with you, the Donald household, and then the other one's the Lifestyle Investor community, as we've engaged in a new partnership, and I'm just thrilled about it, and I think it's such a huge value add to every single member of our community. But let's just talk real quick, for me personally, for my family, I've loved the deals that you guys do because you get access to deals that most people don't get access to because you have a ton of high net worth families that are pooling money and it opens up the door for you to be able to be seen by some of these big institutions, some of these big groups.

So, I love that. But on top of access, you're also getting some preferred terms because you have purchasing power. But you kind of go a step beyond it because you're actually based out of Toronto with offices in New York City but based out of Toronto. So, now there are actually benefits and preferred terms that you get because a lot of these investment companies are looking for Canadian investors. So, now there's another perk, a preferred term, a fee discount, different share class, that we get to participate in, I do, your clients get to participate in. And then on top of that, you have generally a 20 to 40-page due diligence document that outlines everything that you've done because you take an exceptionally deep dive into vetting these deals.

And so, for me, as an investor, that is so refreshing, and it builds a lot of confidence, because I know I personally can never do that level of due diligence. I've done well in my life. I've done well in my investments, but I've never gone to the depths that you have gone to vet these deals, these sponsors, track records, just all these small, little details and miscellaneous things that have just literally gone over my head, and it's really cool.

Mo Lidsky: Yeah. Well, thank you. I'm happy to hear that, obviously. It's delightful to hear that. Also, the only thing I would challenge you on is I think you could do it. I just think your time is occupied with being an entrepreneur, a trusted advisor, an innovator and an artist, and a whole host of other domains. So, it's just not the highest and best use of your time, but you certainly 100% could do it. And, look, I think that to your point on that, so much of this work is just showing up and doing a lot of the grunt work that just people take for granted. Like, behind the scenes, it's like wildly unglamorous, like we're having this conversation about helping people get what they want, but whatever.

But sometimes, behind the scenes, it's just like ho hum administrative this or reporting that, or fact checking, or that, or doing all of the dotting of the Is and crossing of the Ts in 50 different domains. And the reality is a lot of good investing is actually quite boring. A whole host of elements around really good investing and really good, thoughtful capital allocation should be boring. Because if it's exciting all the time, more often than not, that signifies that there's a lot of shiny objects that are kind of part of the equation. But at the same time, like I always think about the, when I got into this business, and I was so surprised to learn that some of these institutional investors that I referenced earlier in almost any given year, they were not top quartile, top decile investors, like they were sort of in that second or third quartile.

But what happened was when you looked at them over this period of 30 or 40 or 50 years, they were consistently top decile, top quartile investors. Not because of how brilliant they were, but really because of how stable they were. And I think a lot of things in and around investing, it's not like that we're so brilliant. We're just trying to help really bright people avoid a lot of the stupidity that they could and would avoid if they had the depth of experience and knowledge and time to allocate to this, and the resource to allocate to it. But most people don't. So, we kind of like just provide that protection. And for us, it's fun for other people. They'd rather be going out and building a business like you are, which is your unique gift to the planet, humanity, your clients, your friends, et cetera.

Justin Donald: Well, I love that and I love that you're able to do the things in the background that other people aren't equipped to do, don't have the time to do, it's not their highest and best use of their time. So, it's like you can be experts over here in an area where someone can outsource. I mean, I actually enjoy doing investing, but I like outsourcing some of what I do to people that are smarter, that have more reps than me, that have more researchers on their team. Like, your analyst, your CIO, like your team's great. We had your Lead CIO, Isaac, come join us at our Lifestyle Investor event here in September, and it was killer. It was one of the highest-rated sessions, and he destroyed a deal. And our internal analyst and CIO for real estate he destroyed a deal, and it was awesome. People just loved it.

And so, I like that we get that. I know that you guys are world-class in your investor reporting. I like getting quarterly reports. I like knowing that someone is looking at the performance of the companies, not just in the moment that they vet them to see if we should invest in them, but that there's ongoing diligence. Like, are you actually hitting the numbers you projected that you are going to hit? I think that's a huge value add, and I think very few groups do that. It, again, is a differentiator for you.

Mo Lidsky: Thank you. Thank you. Very kind of you to say.

Justin Donald: Well, I'd love to talk a little bit about the partnership with Lifestyle Investor because this is the first time you guys have ever done anything like this. Generally, someone has to hire you as a client. Or they are a client, they hire you as their professional to help with investments and different tax strategies, all the things that you guys are doing. And it's really neat seeing not only the deals that you do, like everything that I've had the ability to see and participate in, but it comes at a cost. Like, I'm willing to pay that price, what, a few 100,000 to a few million dollars, depending on what each person, like what are the offerings that each person's using?

I love with our mastermind, if you're a Lifestyle Investor member, you get access to Prime Quadrant deals with the due diligence report, 20 to 40 pages deep dive. You'll learn so much just reading the report of like, "Oh, I never even thought to ask that question. What a great question. Or never thought to research that.” And I just think it's neat for our members to be able to have access to something like that through membership in our community. Because there are a lot of people, I don't even think they realize how great the value is, like, what they're actually getting, how much I'm actually paying for them to be able to piggy back on the deals that we do and the due diligence that we get. It's pretty amazing.

Mo Lidsky: Yeah. And I think you've sort of, in some ways, opened our eyes to an opportunity that we just really hadn't considered. I mean, look, there's a natural limit to how many families we could work with. We're never going to work with 3,000 clients. It's just never going to happen. It's always going to be tight, and we want to make sure we're giving that limited group of families everything that we can. But what happened was we sort of met you, and obviously, I wouldn't have admitted this publicly without your permission, but you've volunteered this as a client. You sort of said, "Well, I'm loving this. I'd love to offer this to my group, to my members, and some of them will never qualify or never fit as a Prime Quadrant client, but they should get as much of the benefits as possible.”

And you've challenged us to figure out how we can do that. And I welcome that. I really appreciate that. And I think what we realized through that is you have kind of synthetically, through your community, created a dialogue and a process for reflection that a lot of people need, and a lot of people end up getting when they're working with us, but they're actually getting some of that in your context. And so, the only value that we could add above that in a meaningful way, other than some of the other kind of family office things in the background, is just giving you full access to those opportunities. And because we're not deal junkies, we're not just shilling stuff, we're sharing the things that, A, we're putting our capital into, and B, we've identified as being truly best in class.

And by the way, I think it's an easy thing to say, but most people don't understand that it's very hard to actually say something is best-in-class and mean it and back that up, unless you have to prove you have to, like, actually be able to wrap your arms around the asset management world. And so, what's nice is, like for you, and this is where your members get just this leverage is and it's this unfair advantage, for us, we've had to pay millions of dollars for the team research tools, analytics, software, other third party research groups like Albourne and Mercer and Hamilton Lane and Preqin, and all the other groups that like we lean on. We're standing on the shoulders of giants already, trying to look a little further. But we're paying a boatload to do that, and your members just get to get all of that.

And I think that that's really thanks to you. We would never have thought of doing that. But for us, it's a little bit of an experiment just to see how is it that we could have more reach without as long as it's done through a trusted party, through a trusted intermediary, where we know that they are well-intentioned, they're honest, they will never misrepresent anything in our world. And one of the things that was, I don't know if you remember the way we met, was one of our clients who was part of your mastermind groups. He and I got together one day, and he's like, “I'd love for you to meet this guy. I'm in with his group. I really enjoy our conversation. I always get value from it. He's showing me interesting deals, but I think you guys should get to know each other.”

And the one thing he said to me, he says, “You'll like him because he's honest, he's humble, he's creative, he's entrepreneurial, he's a person of faith, he's just an extraordinary person that you're going to have a great time talking to.” And like, how can I say no to that introduction? So, I consider myself blessed for, Justin, having met you, and I know we're at the top of the first inning in terms of this partnership, but really, I look forward to all that may emerge from it, and really, I appreciate you even inviting me on here to talk about it.

Justin Donald: Oh, I'm so excited. Thank you for the kind words. Shout out to Jonathan. Huge fan, of course. One of the early members, one of the OGs. Thank you for introducing Mo and I, because the moment we met, it was like we'd known each other forever. We just hit it off immediately, and I see so much collaboration. I'm so proud to be a client, so proud that Lifestyle Investor can have this unique and special partnership with you guys. I mean, it's really fun, because for our members, like Lifestyle Investor member, they're going to pay 55K a year to be part of the mastermind. That's peanuts compared to what it would cost to be a Prime Quadrant member. And they're getting that ability, that access, the deal flow, the due diligence, like it's really such an incredible value add.

And on the flip side, I think there are going to be a lot of people that will hire you, that they're going to be a tier that maybe Prime Quadrant’s not the right fit, or they really enjoy that they get that as a nice perk and benefit for being a mastermind member. But you're going to have another tier that's going to be so blown away. They're going to want more specialized services, dialed in, more investment reporting, and they are going to work with you. And I just love that we have the ability to partner and serve our community in such a unique way that's going to offer incredible value, regardless of where you are in net worth and income, and anything, like we can help you live a better life. I think it's so cool.

Mo Lidsky: Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Justin, and thank you for having me on.

Justin Donald: Yeah. Where can people learn more about you, Mo, and Prime Quadrant? Where do you want to direct them?

Mo Lidsky: I mean, I guess the best place would be our website, which is primequadrant.com. And, yeah, I think also they could check out our podcast at primetalks.com. Not primetalks.com but Prime Talks in Spotify, or wherever they get their podcast. And, yeah, I think more than anything, really, I hope you have tremendous, continued success with the Lifestyle community and the mastermind groups. It's certainly in this day and age, more than anything, people need community, and they need peers, and they need to be able to come together in a real way, in an authentic way. And the fact that you're facilitating that is just great.

Justin Donald: Well, thank you. I just truly believe deep down in my soul, at the core, we all need to spend time with people. They're going to help us play the game of life and business, and wealth creation at a higher level that call us to be a better version of ourselves. And so, that's why I love the Lifestyle Investor mastermind, the community, and being partnered with groups like you. So, thanks again. I like ending every podcast episode with a question for our audience. So, if you're watching this, if you're listening to this, by the way, if you're watching it, hopefully you see the really cool Toronto skyline here on Mo's video. It's really nice. I can't wait to be there.

So, whether you're watching, whether you're listening, my question to you is the same each week. What is one step you can take today to move towards financial freedom and really just move towards living a life that you desire on your terms, not a life by default, but a life by design? And what's something that you can take from Mo today to move you in that direction, to take that next step? Thanks! And we'll catch you next week.