Family Business Audiocast | Episode 64 | Luke Jernagan

Available to Listen Now On: Amazon Music, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Pandora, iHeart, YouTube

New Episodes Live: Subscribe to receive exclusive invitations to upcoming episodes of the Family Business Audiocast. Join us as we explore the pivotal strategies and stories behind successful family enterprises. Click to Follow on LinkedIn.

—————————————————

R. Adam Smith: Welcome to the Family Business Audiocast on LinkedIn. I'm R. Adam Smith, creator of this Audiocast series as an entrepreneur, investor, founder, investment banker, and board leader the last 25 years. I'm fortunate for my many experiences within the family firm industry. A brief comment on why I created this broadcast.

Private companies are a passion of mine. Having grown up in a family of entrepreneurs and having engaged for two decades in deals, strategic transformations, investments, and boards with an array of fascinating family enterprises, family firms, and family offices, I founded this series to offer a useful platform for listeners to hear from veterans, academics, and leaders in the vast family firm ecosystem.

Whether you're a family business owner, building, running, or advising a family office, or just expanding your family office activities, I hope these conversations are useful and enlightening. Now it's time to turn our attention to our accomplished guest on today's episode.

On this episode, I'm joined by Luke Jernagan, Director of Family Learning and Culture at Matter Family Office. Luke, it's really awesome to have you here today.

Luke Jernagan: Thanks, Adam. Glad to be with you.

R. Adam Smith: I'll talk a bit about Luke, then we'll get into it. Luke works closely with families at Matter to strengthen relationships and improve communication, working with them both individually and as a family. His work focuses on the human side of wealth, guiding families through conversations and structures that align values and purpose alongside capital, across generations.

Matter Family Office is an expert in this space, and Luke plays a central role developing programs that support family learning, communication, and governance — helping families navigate succession planning, shared decision-making, and generational transition. This work ensures that wealth supports long-term family wellbeing rather than becoming a source of division. Let's talk a bit about Matter — its mission, brand, and purpose.

Luke Jernagan: Matter Family Office is based in St. Louis, with offices in Denver and Dallas. All of our clients are multi-generational families — we don't work with individuals or foundations, exclusively multi-generational families, currently serving about 140 families across the United States. Matter is a full family office for each client family. Our four main areas of focus are investment management, wealth planning coordination, family office services, and family learning and communication, which sits as an umbrella over all of it.

R. Adam Smith: When was the firm founded, and how has it evolved?

Luke Jernagan: The firm was founded in the late nineties by Kathy Lintz here in St. Louis. We've had significant growth in recent years — earlier in 2025 we merged with IWP Family Office in Denver. We now have a team of about a hundred people across our three locations. That's let us add real depth in accounting, bill pay, and family office services through IWP, in addition to Matter's original core of investments, wealth planning, and family learning.

R. Adam Smith: Amazing. I have a lot of experience in wealth management, having bought and sold several companies in the space — it's a very intense endeavor, so it's great to see that growth continue smoothly. I like that Matter recognizes wealth management goes well beyond the financial side, staying active and intentional about decision-making across generations. Tell us about your own path into family advisory work, what drew you to Matter, and a bit about the culture at this well-respected firm.

Luke Jernagan: There are only a handful of people around the country doing this kind of family learning and communication work within firms — there's no degree program for it, so we all joke that each of us has an origin story, because it's a winding path. Most of my career I was an Episcopal minister, leading a congregation here in St. Louis — St. Peter's Church in Ladue — for seven years, before that in Florida and New York.

I was introduced to Matter about five years ago and began working here four years ago. In pastoral ministry, I served congregations in affluent communities with a lot of multi-generational family members who owned businesses together or shared significant wealth. What I learned is that for some families, their business or wealth gave them shared purpose and identity and brought them closer together over time; for others, managing all those entities and assets drove them apart. What attracted me to Matter was that this human dimension is a core part of how they serve families, with a genuinely positive, encouraging approach to helping families thrive across generations.

R. Adam Smith: Wonderful — I'm actually recording this from St. Louis myself, since today's my mom's birthday, and I'm originally from here.

Luke Jernagan: Great city — I've been here 15 years now and love it.

R. Adam Smith: A successful transplant. My parents actually went to Ladue High School, just down the street from your church. Nice area. Let's talk about the Matter culture — what distinguishes it in this growing industry?

Luke Jernagan: A few things. First, there's a lot of churn and M&A activity in this industry right now. Before merging with IWP, we took on minority investment from BW Forsyth Partners here in St. Louis — a private equity firm with a genuinely unique approach: they've bought over a hundred businesses and never sold one. We wanted a permanent solution that would let Matter be a hundred-year family office for hundred-year families. Nearly every client wants to preserve wealth across three, four, five generations or more, and they want a firm that will be there for the long term.

We're now in the position of being able to say that what Matter is today is what we'll always be — we're never going to be sold, and we won't need to look elsewhere for capital down the road. The majority of Matter will always be owned by its employees and team members, with BW Forsyth as a partner providing permanent capital to grow and strengthen the platform. Who we are is who we'll always be.

R. Adam Smith: That's wonderful. With my M&A background focused mostly on smaller mid-size businesses, family offices, and entrepreneurial companies, that structure between Matter and its investor is genuinely ideal — an encouraging case study for the industry. I know both firms and I'm a big fan.

Let's move to the family relationship side — difficult conversations around wealth and inheritance, encouraging communication, vulnerability, and emotional courage between generations, and bringing in both internal dialogue and external advisors. Talk about that from your perspective.

Luke Jernagan: As I mentioned, all our clients are multi-generational families. Funny thing you'll appreciate as a fellow St. Louisan — whenever I'm out at a social event here and tell people what I do, almost everyone assumes I must deal with a lot of conflict. In reality, since family learning and communication is a core part of what Matter offers from the start, we tend to attract families who'd say they get along pretty well and want to keep it that way. That said, we regularly work with families experiencing some friction.

What's really shaped our philosophy is that communication is the primary catalyst for sound decision-making and long-term family success. Second to that is clearly defined values, vision, and long-term goals — a family's North Star. When families communicate effectively and share clearly defined goals, they make much better decisions together and talk more openly about both opportunities and challenges.

Every family that signs with us for family office services starts with a communications retreat within the first few months. Shortly after, we lead a family meeting to help them identify their values, vision, and a five-to-ten-year set of goals. That's not just nice for family culture — it becomes practical, informing their investment policy statement and decisions about how they use and invest their wealth. We want communication and values to be fully integrated into how the family operates day to day, not just a cultural nicety.

R. Adam Smith: On the multi-generational front — I focus primarily on M&A and larger private companies, and I often see family office wealth anchored in a single holding. When most wealth is concentrated in one company, there's a lot of pride, ego, illiquidity, and legacy tied up in it, which makes preparing for a sale genuinely tricky. Talk about that transition — balancing pride and connection to the operating company with the willingness to eventually let it go.

Luke Jernagan: A lot depends on ownership structure — whether it's a single generation or spread across several — but regardless, everyone has a sense of pride and identity tied to the family owning that business, especially if the family name is in the title. We encourage families to talk openly about this long before a sale is finalized. The worst outcome is people finding out after the fact that a life-altering decision has already been made. We encourage families to discuss not just the financial mechanics of a potential sale, but what it will mean for the family — for that business to sit outside family control, and what shifting to a new kind of entity means going forward.

R. Adam Smith: Once a family has more liquidity after a sale, they need to decide what to do with it. What are you seeing with next gen and that liquidity? I sense a lot of evolution — the next gen doesn't seem to view wealth the same way, wanting more freedom, independence, and creativity in how it's deployed.

Luke Jernagan: A friend of the firm, Matt Wesley, is often asked how much money someone should leave their kids, and his answer is always: as much as you've prepared them for. That captures Matter's philosophy well. Our goal through any liquidity event or wealth transfer is to facilitate conversations with every family member long before the wealth actually transfers.

There's a lot of industry emphasis right now on "next gen" or "rising gen" education, but Matter intentionally avoids those terms, because we think that framing is incomplete. When a family goes through this kind of transition, every generation is experiencing it for the first time — everyone has something to learn, and everyone has wisdom to contribute. So we work with every family member and ask: what do you need to manage this transition well? Do you need technical education? Clarity on the roles of beneficiaries and trustees? And if parents are preparing to transfer wealth, we ask them: what tangible things do you need to see from your kids to feel confident they'll manage this wealth well?

R. Adam Smith: I like how Matter is built around the philosophy that wealth should enhance a person's life, not consume it — a welcome, more humanist approach in a world often defined by wealth and power. That's consistent with your investor's philosophy too — Barry Wehmiller's "human-first" approach to capitalism, championed by Bob Chapman, who I know. Does that humanist thread trace back to Kathy Lintz's own values shaping the firm?

Luke Jernagan: Absolutely — that's actually why our partnership with BW was such a natural fit; our philosophies were perfectly aligned. The way Barry Wehmiller emphasizes truly human leadership, treating every team member as someone's beloved child, mirrors exactly how we think about serving our families — treating every family member equally, recognizing each has values and something to contribute.

Kathy was ahead of the curve, emphasizing human capital over 20 years ago, often at conferences where people dismissed the whole idea. She pushed forward anyway, and now Matter has 20 years of experience leading families through this work. More and more families are actively seeking this out — they recognize the need to make decisions together in a way that strengthens family harmony, and Matter is increasingly seen as a leader in that space.

R. Adam Smith: I also notice Matter's structure as a multi-family office is somewhat unique — there's no single model in this industry anymore; some firms are pure wealth managers, some open architecture, some closed, some hybrid. Matter seems to serve three categories: multi-generational families, entrepreneurs in transition after selling a company, and single-family offices outsourcing certain functions, almost OCIO-style. From a soft power and emotional intelligence perspective, what are you seeing across the industry in terms of human capital, both at large single-family offices and smaller ones?

Luke Jernagan: I'll answer in two parts — trends among wealthy families, and trends within family offices themselves. The landscape is clearly changing for wealthy families and their advisors. The number of families with $100 million or more is growing about 9% a year — one of the fastest-growing demographic groups in the U.S. economy right now. There are currently 10,000 U.S. families with $100 million or more, and over 100,000 with $50 million or more.

At the same time, communities where these families can gather and discuss the impact of wealth on their family are also growing — 15 or 20 years ago there simply weren't as many of these families, and there were no real forums for shared experience. Today there's the Tugboat Institute, the Southeast Family Office Forum, Tiger 21, and others, along with more publications focused on single-family offices and ultra-high-net-worth families.

What's changing is that families are talking more openly with each other, not just about investments and business strategy, but about how accumulated wealth is affecting their family, and looking to each other for best practices. That's pushed single-family offices, multi-family offices, and wealth advisors to recognize they need to offer real human capital support, not just investment services.

Matter serves multi-generational families in a lot of different ways — some families have most of their wealth tied up in an operating business, and we're not managing assets for them at all, just helping with wealth planning, estate and trust creation, accounting, and family learning. Some come to us only for family learning and communication. Some come only for investments. A growing segment for us is existing single-family offices looking to outsource certain services — maybe they do investments or real estate really well, but want us to wrap around them with family learning, communication, bill pay, and wealth planning. Family learning is often the core piece we bring to those engagements, working directly with the family and their existing SFO team.

R. Adam Smith: Do you refer to that MFO-serving-an-SFO role as OCIO, or just wealth management?

Luke Jernagan: I'd say just wealth management.

R. Adam Smith: Back to next gen — I imagine a large share of your clients have children involved in some way. Once a company is sold, the next gen's role and relationship to the wealth shifts significantly, along with their own passions and interests. Talk about that stewardship dynamic — aligning wealth creation with long-term vision, and some practical ways to involve, encourage, educate, and incentivize the next generation.

Luke Jernagan: We've built out a fairly deep curriculum around both human skills and technical skills. On the human side, one example is what we'd call being a "welcoming family" — if a family shares assets together, what happens when one of the children gets engaged? How do we support that person and the family so they welcome a new member in a way that expands the family's tapestry, rather than creating friction?

As next-gen family members receive wealth, we want them to have open communication with, say, the parents who transferred it, as well as any trustee involved — everyone feeling like they're at the same table, part of the same team, thinking about how that wealth adds value. One family member might be passionate about entrepreneurship, and we help them think through using their assets to start a successful business. Another might be passionate about nonprofit work, and we help them think through managing their assets responsibly while pursuing that. It's about helping each individual family member get clear not just on the family's shared goals and values, but their own personal values and long-term vision — how that aligns with the rest of the family, and how their financial wealth supports what they actually want to do.

R. Adam Smith: Wonderful. Let's close with reflections on legacy — the anchoring topic of this podcast. What does legacy typically mean for multi-generational families, especially once a company is sold and they lose that anchoring asset and emotional tie, even as significant wealth and the family itself carry on?

Luke Jernagan: Our family learning and communication program has gone through several names over time — originally Family Legacy, then Family Culture and Legacy, then Family Culture and Learning, now Family Learning and Communication. What we learned is that "legacy" was actually a fraught term for many families we work with, because people often think of legacy as something created by a senior generation and passed down without each successive generation having real input into shaping it. Think of a grandparent who endowed a university building, or named a museum wing — you live with that entity bearing your family name, without much say in shaping what that legacy actually means.

We really want to help families create a living legacy through shared learning. A family that had a business giving them identity and shared purpose doesn't lose that legacy once the business is sold — they've learned from that experience, and they can deploy the financial wealth from the sale into new businesses, foundations, or other ventures, letting the other forms of family capital continue to grow. We help families think about what each member contributes to that legacy, and how it continues to grow and nurture into future generations — legacy doesn't end with the sale of a family business; what the family learned running it and selling it transfers into whatever they choose to do together next.

R. Adam Smith: Exactly — continuity is key. We've covered Matter's recent merger with IWP in Denver, a very successful transaction, expanding the firm into Denver, Texas, and St. Louis. Founder Kathy Lintz has done great work, and I look forward to meeting her someday. And of course Barry Wehmiller's investment arm as your partner — Bob Chapman and Kyle are friends of mine and great people, one of the companies I admire most in the world.

We've had some St. Louis figures on the podcast, including Kyle Chapman, and we'll soon have Betsy Cohen and Kelly from the Burgess Foundation, as well as Richard Wolkowitz earlier — a friend of mine and of the family. Great to add Matter to that list. Any final thoughts on your experience in St. Louis, and one more plug for the city?

Luke Jernagan: I grew up in Florida — never in a million years thought I'd end up in the Midwest. Fifteen years in St. Louis now, and I love it. I hope people from around the world listening to your podcast get to know how great this city is — they should spend time here, do business here, catch a baseball game, a soccer game, a hockey game. It's a wonderful place to live and to be.

R. Adam Smith: Thank you, Luke. We've covered the importance of relationships, communication, and culture in sustaining family wealth across generations, and Luke's role as something like a consigliere for the softer side of the family office experience is genuinely essential — critical to creating alignment, sustainability, and harmony within family offices in this expanding industry. Thanks for joining today — hope you enjoyed it.

Luke Jernagan: Adam, thank you so much for the time — I've really enjoyed it.

R. Adam Smith: This is R. Adam Smith, signing off. Please stay tuned for the next episode of the Family Business Audiocast.

—————————————————

Explore the strategic intricacies of family business success with the RAS Family Business Audiocast. Join R. Adam Smith as he delves into exclusive discussions with global leaders shaping the future of private wealth and enterprise. Each episode offers a rare glimpse into the core decisions driving prosperity in high-stakes markets. Tune in to gain expert insights and innovative strategies that empower family businesses to thrive across generations.

Available On : Amazon Music, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Pandora, iHeart, YouTube

Disclaimer:
Opinions presented are personal and do not represent the positions of speakers’, sponsors’, or guests’ organizations.

Family Business Audiocast™