For Generations to Come: Sustaining One Family's Legacy and Lifestyle

With help from his wife and daughters, Martin Prieto worked hard to build their family business. Now, First Citizens is helping him manage and preserve everything they've built.

Creating a successful business was a family effort. And Martin Prieto wants to ensure that his family can sustain their hard-earned lifestyle.

After working in restaurants for much of his life, Prieto started his family's company from their garage in pursuit of the American dream—a better life for his wife and daughters. They'd pack spices together every night, and in the mornings Prieto would drive the spices around to local restaurants and sell them door to door from his pickup truck.

Today, Martin's Distribution operates out of a 35,000-square-foot facility, with 20 commercial delivery trucks in their fleet. They've expanded from just offering spices to distributing more than 900 products, including fresh produce and dry goods.

While hard work and industry expertise have been building blocks to his success, Prieto's relationships with First Citizens—which includes his commercial banker, Juan Tisera, and his wealth consultant, Allen Lockwood—have also been key ingredients. Growing the business was just one of their first steps as a team, and they're now working together to preserve everything the Prietos have built so it can last for generations.

How planning and relationships open doors

Prieto and Tisera met about 15 years ago. "We started working with Juan first," Prieto says. "He quickly became a trusted and important part of our operation."

Initially, Tisera helped the Prietos with their business plan—ultimately giving them access to better banking tools and specialists, helping them move into a bigger warehouse space and providing a line of credit that they used to expand their fleet.

As his relationship manager, Tisera also connected Prieto with several specialists to help his business in different ways, including a controller and CPA to keep his company's finances in order, an attorney and an insurance partner to protect everything he'd built.

However, Tisera also wanted to help Prieto feel as confident in his personal finances as he did with his business finances. So he connected Prieto with a wealth consultant to help guide the family's financial and long-term wealth planning.

From business to personal

"It often starts with the commercial relationship," says Lockwood, Prieto's First Citizens Wealth consultant. "But once that commercial relationship gets to a certain point, we really need to start talking about the personal."

For entrepreneurs like Prieto, their business and their personal finances are often very intertwined, Lockwood says. One of his strategies is to try to unwind this so business owners like Prieto can begin to work on their business and not just in it.

"Through our conversations with Martin, we gained an understanding of how he wants his business to operate and how much capital he may want to transfer to his personal balance sheet along the way," Lockwood says.

Questions and conversations that matter

As with any client, Lockwood asked questions to help him understand Prieto's goals—what he wants to accomplish personally—and see how on track he was to accomplish them.

"We met with Martin and had some great conversations about what he and his family were looking to accomplish, and then we took that information and started putting plans in place to help them head toward those goals," he says.

Another aspect included helping Prieto take a step back and understand the value of his business. Then, based on his goals, they explored strategies for keeping it healthy and increasing its value.

"Together, we worked through questions like, 'What can you incorporate in your business that can help drive that value?'" Lockwood says.

Through their business advisory services, the First Citizens team conducted a business assessment to help evaluate some of the processes Prieto had in place to help drive the revenue and products of their business.

"The First Citizens team has helped us grow and improve our business in many ways," Prieto says. "The business assessment was very eye-opening and revealed opportunities that helped us improve what we're doing."

Lockwood says Prieto already had great social and customer capital, but the business assessment allowed him to implement strategies that have helped him expand their market share, maximize their revenue and ultimately increase the value of his company.

Maintaining the legacy they built

It's easy for entrepreneurs like Prieto to get caught up in day-to-day business tasks, but he's grateful that Tisera connected him with Lockwood and the First Citizens Wealth team.

"They showed me a really clear picture of where we stand financially," Prieto says. "And they showed me there are more things that we can do so that our hard work pays off for generations to come."

Prieto says he knows what his business is worth now—and feels his family business and personal finances are better connected.

Prieto started his own business to be a part of the community while building a legacy for his family. "Now, I know how to grow and protect that legacy so it can last for generations," he says.