What 4 Family Offices Wish They Knew Before Managing Serious Wealth

0:02Let's say that you're giving advice to somebody who's just come into some incredible wealth. if that was you what's the one thing that you think you really would have wanted to hear as opposed to what everyone told you maybe maybe two things really quick so i definitely spend time with your family uh because the the money that's built has to exist beyond itself there has to be a purpose to it and the generation that will inherit it can never really understand the struggle of how it was built like my family my parents coming here with nothing as immigrants with a child that they have to feed I think of myself as a very capable person I don't think I could do what they did and it's so important that we get to sit down together and build a legacy it's like I always say like legacies built at the dinner table so that's where you're really forming the purpose of the family.

1:02I will say what I wish I learned earlier, and I have learned, and would like to let everyone else know, is don't be afraid of pain. I found that wealth leads to certain comfort that can lead to certain complacency, and pain is what probably built the fortune in the first place. Pain is what's going to keep it. So don't be afraid of that. And we actually, as investors, we have the privilege to share pain with the people that we're investing into, whether that's our capital or our time. We get to take that. And, you know, the blessing is we don't get to keep it, right? But we get to alleviate maybe some of their suffering in that moment, build a stronger bond with them and become stronger people, better people, and stay human in the process.

1:51Great. Thank you for sharing that, James. Eric, your own thoughts? yeah I'm gonna shift topic a little bit I saw some people I didn't mean any you know discomfort with emotions with my story it's all a happy ending I forgot to tell you that he's got two kids now and I go ski with them every year but when it comes to this trust yeah yeah that's that's that's truly remarkable I'm gonna be a little bit more like specific and precise too and it ties to the question about what advice would you give to someone that stumbles upon money two things build a true structure and intention don't just start chasing butterflies and you know change all those things be very intentional with what you're doing both for your capital preservation and how you want your money to multiply and go and choose your partners right choose your partners very wisely and the first thing I do I mean I think we have 90 percent people here using Claude for due diligence it's it's easy that's not the hard part anymore right but so very specifically is the person that you are going to trust with your money, does he or she has skin in the game?

2:56Are they going to lose and make money as you are doing it? And maybe even more importantly, are they going to lose money first? If I'm going to take care of somebody else's money, I want to be able to look them in the eyes. And if I were to lose somebody else's money, I want to say, I lost first. I lost more. We're going to win together. We're going to lose together. So that whole thing with like the GPLP alignment is a structural thing that I find to be super important in terms of actually building that trust. And if you actually want to get into the deals that fits in whatever you're trying to do, make sure that element is there.

3:31For good or bad of the outcome, because you set up with the right expectations. Yeah. And ultimately, if you're building trust, if you trust someone and they say, yeah, I'm going to do exactly what I'm going to do with your money, that's what I'm doing with my money. That for me is, from a capitalist point of view, the ultimate trust. Thank you. Randy? Yeah, I'm going to approach it differently. The first thing, when you come into money, you really need to get it. Tom Handler said this earlier. You need to have the right professionals. It's very critical. The other thing is everybody thinks family office.

4:05Well, you know what? Not everybody should be a family office. You first have to decide if you're going to be a family office, and there are ways to get the benefits of family office without doing it. So professionals are key. Tax structuring, how you set it up. understand your family what do you want to do for your family what are your goals do you want it to be charitable what do you want to do the other thing is in today's world technology for a family office is unbelievable you can set up a family office very easily the software is out there and you can do everything very remotely so i mean if there's ever a time for somebody coming into wealth and be able to set up and use it now's the time

4:46so there's lots of things you could really advise but i really you know or perspective that i have but i really think it comes down to a few things like what is the purpose of money and and how do you think about like what's the most precious thing you have which is time it's like people make lots of money for freedom of purpose freedom of relationships Friendships, freedom of time, family. So I would really take a step back and say, what does this money give me the freedom for based on my values? And I would really start there because I think when I find that I make decisions based on my values, they're always a lot better decisions certainly than based on fear.

5:33So I would just take a step back and say, hey, I have all this money. by the way it didn't come generally out of nowhere it came because you inherited it which you knew over time you would most likely or because you grinded and built something and ended up with money but i would take a step back and say who am i what are my values what i want to be able to achieve you know many of you may be from real think eos which is like an operating system in a business that's pretty well known like what's my 10-year five-year three-year one-year goals what is my mission what are my core values like a lot of this stuff goes on in business like take a step back in to find that for yourself and then you could begin to say well who are the advisors that align with my values who are the people that i would hire to support what i'm trying to achieve so that would be the advice that i would share um for anybody that ultimately has a lot of money and just thinking about it and i'll just make one other quick comment connected to this is people build and i'm a little bit speaking my book on this so i admit that i'm a little bit biased but people build lots of money for freedom of time purpose relationships yet so many people are building single family offices that have that aren't in the investment business they didn't make their money in the investment business and even if they did is that what they really want to do because others are doing etc so it's like how do you think about how do you want to spend that time what is the right infrastructure to support you and what you're trying to achieve in the future i appreciate for all four of you your perspectives on this i'm glad for that last question you each had a different take because being in full agreement wouldn't have given us the type of breadth and depth that you all have lent to your families, to your businesses.

7:05When I first met Richard a couple years ago through my friend Daniel, the one thing Daniel said was, Richard brings his kids to his conferences. And the rule I made for myself 11 years ago for any introduction made to me is, unless you're somebody that I would leave my kids with, you weren't worth building that trust with. Because everything came for me from a structure of understanding that I had to talk to the highest bar of humans. So I'm grateful for the four of you for being here. Please join me in thanking them for being part of this panel.

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