Ulrich describes himself as the quarterback who leads a team of tribal members and outside experts on matters ranging from retirement plan consulting and tribal member education to debt financing and economic development.
“We build long-term financial models and budgets for tribes based on their current needs and their population to help them to be economically sustainable,” Ulrich said.
“As part of that overall financial modeling, for example, when we see they have a huge need for homes we need to figure out how to fund that,” he added. “I get the tribe’s approval, and then I help coordinate a team of people who can help get that done. Some of them come from within the pueblo, such as the existing housing authority. Then I bring in outside folks who can provide assistance in areas such as the New Markets Tax Credit or the Low Income Housing Tax Credit.”
When it comes to helping tribes borrow money, restructure debt or do some type of financial modeling and analysis for a project, Ulrich often turns to the investment bank TFA Capital Partners. Formerly known as Tribal Financial Advisors, the firm was created in 2009. Co-founder and chairman Kristi Jackson has worked in Indian Country since 1995, and previously managed the tribal gaming finance efforts at investment bank Banc of America Securities’ (now BofA Securities).
She described a situation where Ulrich referred one of his New Mexico tribal clients to TFA to help build a tribe-wide financial reporting model. It had a number of different enterprises and each did its own financial reporting, but there wasn’t a centralized way to forecast the cash flows coming out of each of them on a consolidated basis.
“We built multiple financial models that the individual entities could use as a tool when they did their forecasting, but they were structured as such so that when it rolled up to the overall tribe it created a holistic picture for the tribe to understand its overall finances,” Jackson explained. “It seems like a normal type of thing a corporation would do, but it’s kind of a novel concept in Indian Country.”
She said there are a handful of independent RIAs that work in Indian Country, but she reckons none have the depth of knowledge, resources and dedication that Ulrich Investment Consultants brings to the table.
“John will go on a weekly basis and sit with a tribal council and walk them through details of things that go well beyond the bounds of someone who just manages the assets,” Jackson said. “He’s become a trusted advisor.”
Regarding Ulrich’s compensation when he works with sovereign tribes, he’ll charge a fee structure for project-only work that covers his time and effort. When it involves assets to be managed, that involves an advisory fee. “That fee is pretty much in line with what you’d see with an institutional account,” he said.
Nascent Stage
Both Ulrich and Jackson have had front-row seats to the economic evolution taking place among sovereign native tribes during the past few decades, where the biggest impact has come from the growth of casinos. Total tribal gross gaming revenue was $34.6 billion in fiscal year 2019, representing a 30.6% rise since 2010, according to the National Indian Gaming Commission. Jackson said much of the gaming revenue initially went toward paying down debt accrued to build casinos, but for the most part those debts have been paid and the casinos now generate positive cash flow. The next step is using that money to create a trickle-down effect to improve a tribe’s overall quality of life.
“Even though they have resources coming in, they’re still in a nascent stage of figuring how to best manage them,” Jackson said.
And given the body blows that casinos took during the pandemic, tribes with casinos are asking how they can diversify their economies. But some tribes that don’t have gaming as a backstop are still grappling with ways to generate any kind of meaningful economic existence.
“We have a tribal client in Montana that are great people, but it’s hard to move anything forward because they’re so isolated that even a casino won’t work there,” Ulrich said. “It’s a tribe that could extract minerals from the ground that could create some economic benefit, but they spiritually and culturally don’t want to do anything to harm the water or the ground. It’s kind of a tug of war between the native culture and the modern world.”
Another vagary of dealing with native tribes is that tribal leaders are often elected on a short-term basis. “In some cases you get stuff going in order to do a project and then those leaders might leave after a year or two, and then new people come in and sometimes you have to start over again. It can be challenging to get a long-term vision in place that you can stick with.”
Nonetheless, Ulrich finds the work very rewarding, and he has been imparting his knowledge base to staff members at his firm because he aims to expand his tribal client base. He says he doesn’t cold call tribes for business, but instead gets the word out by speaking at conferences and establishing referral networks with other professionals who work in Indian Country.
“My goal over the next 10 years is to be the premier provider in the country of the types of services we provide,” he said. “Everybody can do wealth management, but I think we’re uniquely positioned to offer full-service consulting with sovereign tribes. I’ve been involved in every aspect of what a tribe can be faced with, and I have the ability to help bring to fruition what they need.”
He says he enjoys working with both tribal and non-tribal clients, and he doesn’t want to play favorites. But he hinted that working with sovereign tribes enables him to accomplish outcomes he likely wouldn’t achieve doing traditional RIA-type work.
“My private clients make their wealth, and we’re just kind of helping them get from Point A to Point B. And that’s very important, don’t get me wrong,” Ulrich said.
“But when you think about doing something 15 or 20 years ago that got more kids educated or got people interested in getting a health clinic being built, that’s really cool stuff. All that our firm does gives me satisfaction, but where I’ve had the biggest impact on people’s lives is probably the work I’ve done with tribal communities and helping them advance on what they want to do.”