Monticeto Medical Real Estate is a family-owned business led by CEO Chip Conk. He and his brother and sister have been in business since 2005 buying medical office buildings around the country.
After the Great Recession, Conk was focused on internal alignment in part so that when another downturn struck, the company would be ready. He says he and his siblings found that alignment by focusing on where they wanted the business to be in five to 10 years. To solidify that commitment, they hired a firm to value the business to understand its current worth as well as what it could it be worth if it grew under certain assumptions
“We call that our BHAG — our big hairy audacious goal,” he says. “And that got my siblings aligned, one, because it wasn't me it was a third party and they had all the comps (to show) this is what you have. When you're so close to a business, sometimes you don't know what you've already built. And maybe more importantly, you don't know where you could go with the right vision and alignment. So that was a turning point.”
The third party confirmed that Monticeto was a valuable business and if they executed their plan they could reach their goal. Not only did that get the family together, but it also led them to hire great people to help execute that plan because the family didn’t know how to do everything in the plan. The family then doubled the employee count over 24 months, bringing in experts who could hit the ground running, and soon began expanding. Then, when the pandemic hit, because the family had applied the lessons it learned from the recession, COVID’s impact on the market didn’t impede the company’s growth.
The family continued to met regularly with experts to stay on track, establish a vision and determine how to grow revenue 20 percent. It helped the company triple in size, but it also helped them consider other opportunities. Today, the family assets other than real estate that it’s managing that could help when they reach a liquidity event.
“We see our family making other strategic investments that will help the core business,” Conk says. “But also it's a good transition because we don't all want to just retire. We feel like we could take advantage of a really great market value with what we built over a 20-year period. But that will just be maybe chapter one into another chapter for our family and our kids, if they want to get involved.”
Conk, along with Bass, Berry & Sims’ Partner Frank Pellegrino and EY Partner - Americas Family Office Leader Bobby Stover, spoke at this year’s Nashville Smart Business Dealmakers Conference about dealmaking, growth and communication within a family business. Hit play on the video above to catch the full panel discussion.
