Ash: ‘You know what time it is? It’s Live Bold and Boss Up time with your girls, Steph and Ash. Thank you so much for joining. We so appreciate the support. Please make sure you like and subscribe and share this podcast. This is how we get you the best interviews, the best shows. We really appreciate the support guys in this special episode. We get to interview Taylor Ranker, who’s the founder and CEO of Questmont Virtual Family Office. They have done a great job of building a fantastic brand. They provide services focused on community and they chat a little bit about selecting their clients, which I thought was really unique and interesting. We are out on a yacht recording for the very first time and the audio sounds amazing. We’re very distracted by all these fun things that are going on. Sonya Ranker, Taylor’s wife, is there. We’ve got the starburst crew there. We’ve got everyone kind of watching and interacting, and it’s just so much fun, so much energy. We hope you like it too. See you on the flip side.’
Steph: ‘See, this is a first for us. We’re on a yacht with Taylor Ranker. Yeah, with Questmont. Thank you so much. This is a great experience. This is amazing. This background is amazing.’
Taylor Ranker: ‘You’re welcome. So this is our, we this is our. Yeah. It’s like a net jets partnership. So we have a partnership with these folks. So we’re on here all the time. Do some night trips, some day stuff we spent Gasparilla here, so it’s fun looking up here from the third floor looking.’
Steph: ‘Amazing. Well, you have such a great reputation and a brand in Tampa and not just Tampa all over. But tell us a little bit about your background, your company and I want to I want to dig into more about that as well. Just your brand and how. You created that.’
Taylor Ranker: ‘I refer to myself as the great Riveter. So my job is not to be the technician, it’s to rivet on the latest next wonderful thing that makes the firm more impactful. So my job is literally to travel the country, travel the world, good ideas, mastermind groups and say ohh, this business owner high net worth family might need that tool and that tool. So it’s it’s kind of a creative function. And you, you two know. But I started as a life insurance agent 36 years ago. I loved being in the financial services business, but hated that transactional Commission-based world. So I’ve been a big advocate of trying to literally bend. Ash: ‘MHM.’ Taylor Ranker: ‘The wealth management, financial advice industry clients will not my will. But to make it more transparent, more honest and so that’s been a 36-year journey. I intend to be successful any day now. See, we’ll see.’
Taylor Ranker: ‘So we discussed that openly, like that’s not something behind the scenes. I’m sure you have your moments being at work and at home like 24/7 together as.’
Steph: ‘Scenes. I’m sure you have your moments being at work and at home like 24/7 together as.’
Taylor Ranker: ‘We haven’t had a tiff in 72 hours, but it was a small one. Like they, they happen. But I think surprisingly rare for as much as. We’re together.’
Ash: ‘Will allows for.’
Taylor Ranker: ‘It does create a bit of an addiction like we’re addicted.’
Steph: ‘To each other. It’s really cute.’
Taylor Ranker: ‘Better. Well, I’m addicted. I can’t speak for her. Coffee together. Work together, love together, travel together. Raised. I got the blessing of adopting her son and her natural son. So I’ve raised him since he was pretty much 15 months.’
Steph: ‘Right. Wow.’
Taylor Ranker: ‘And now he’s 6 foot four, £250 and can. Beat my ***. Good kid, really good kid.’
Steph: ‘That’s great. That’s really nice. I’m sure it’s like.’
Ash: ‘It allowed you guys to be overly communicative, right? Having to do everything together. I love the addiction.’
Taylor Ranker: ‘Yes.’
Ash: ‘Word to it. I think that’s really nice, yeah.’
Taylor Ranker: ‘I’m not making that up. That’s sincere. So it’s that’s a bit of a problem though, because then if you’re not together or something would happen to one of us, you know you’re you’re kicking an. Addiction.’
Ash: ‘Huge. Upside to that too, right? Making sure that you’re going to work well together. Everyone just kind of. Clamors right at. Oh, you wanna? You wanna do business. Great. Let’s go. And you’re like, well, hold a minute. Hold on. Right, you take a minute. Right.’
Taylor Ranker: ‘We screen them. Yeah. No, no, we screen them because the values have to align. We’re if if they have a. Child who has a drug addiction. We have to know. If they have a child who has a spouse that they don’t trust that they want to protect assets from, we have to know if they have a golf buddy who they love, but. Is. Trying to sell them something that has to be revealed so there has to be a philosophical. Factor and quite frankly, there are families we don’t.’
Steph: ‘Right.’
Taylor Ranker: ‘Want. Yeah. So one of the 9 high net worth personalities is called. Gambler. They’re not a literal gambler, it just means they become wealthy and they want to gamble with the wealth, so they might sell a. Business for $50 million. And let’s throw a third of that into crypto. It’s not about community, it’s not about your kids. It’s not about lifestyle. That’s just I would, I would argue that’s an almost an unhealthy relationship with money because it’s money for money, sake. There’s no other productive end. You don’t work with that person. I don’t care if.’
Steph: ‘Right, right.’
Taylor Ranker: ‘They got a billion. So that’s one of the benefits, is it also we use it as a marital tool. So we give them the test like saying and I’ve taken the test a couple of times and so we know. So for example, one of our, one of the categories is family store. We both score real high there. So taking care of our son, if we had to, taking care of our parents, take care of my little sister, our little sister is a school teacher here in Hillsborough. She doesn’t make much money, but she knows. We got her back.’
Speaker: ‘Yeah.’
Taylor Ranker: ‘Right, but, but here’s a downside. We’re both VIP’s like to be on yachts and drink champagne. And here’s the here’s the problem, ash when when you’re both VIP’s, there’s no check and balance in the. Right, 01. Yeah, sure, let’s. Sure, honey. But it is. It’s a great marital tool. It can be used for business partners, but yes, it’s unique. But it also helps us know the clients a. Much deeper level. We know them and then they know each other better than any. Other. Family office or wealth advisory in the land. By the way, the test is proprietary.’
Steph: ‘You came up with that?’
Taylor Ranker: ‘Nope. Yeah, we have access to it. We bought it so that so there are other tests, but that specific one is proprietary.’
Ash: ‘Nice.’
Steph: ‘In addition to, you know your company and and what a great brand you’ve built, you’re also very involved in the community and lots of, right. Yeah. I see your name everywhere. So I know you’re very involved.’
Taylor Ranker: ‘Getting better at it. So I say this as a bit of a confession. Having lived in central PA. God bless those folks. God bless that place. But it’s a conformist place and I’m not conformist Missoni and I, being a little colorful, never were really that. Embraced by the community. So when we come here and it’s like, holy crud, these people reciprocate. They open to us. And so for the first time in my 59 years of life, I actually want to do cool stuff in the community right now. Jlo, our chief of staff, one of her missions, is to find better ways for us to facilitate that. What? Charities that we want to support, do we want to elevate cause we do have limited bandwidth, but I’ve never felt like that before. When I was in a community that I actually wanted to see it blossom.’