We Study Billionaires - The Investor’s Podcast Network - TIP530: The Top 5 Billionaire Books w/ Richard Wilson
Episode Date: March 3, 2023Trey invites Richard Wilson. Together, they discuss his top 5 favorite books written by billionaires and tease out the lessons from each one. Richard is the Founder and CEO of The Family Office Club, ...which is the #1 family office association with over 4,000 registered family offices. IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL LEARN: 00:00 - Intro 02:02 - What a family office is and how it works. 16:53 - The first thing you should focus on when setting one up. 46:54 - Key lessons from Richard’s top 5 billionaire books. 54:14 - Insights from billionaire keynotes from his events, including Jeff Hoffman, Grant Cardone and others. 58:09 - The strategies that Richard finds most useful. Disclaimer: Slight discrepancies in the timestamps may occur due to podcast platform differences. BOOKS AND RESOURCES Join the exclusive TIP Mastermind Community to engage in meaningful stock investing discussions with Stig, Clay, and the other community members. Visit The Family Office Club Website. Check out: Billionaires.com. Visit The Investors Club Website. Related Episode: Listen to Secrets from a Private Billionaire Club w/ Michael Sonnenfeldt - TIP525 or watch the video. Richard Wilson's Twitter. Trey Lockerbie's Twitter. NEW TO THE SHOW? Check out our We Study Billionaires Starter Packs. Browse through all our episodes (complete with transcripts) here. Try our tool for picking stock winners and managing our portfolios: TIP Finance Tool. Enjoy exclusive perks from our favorite Apps and Services. Stay up-to-date on financial markets and investing strategies through our daily newsletter, We Study Markets. Learn how to better start, manage, and grow your business with the best business podcasts. SPONSORS Support our free podcast by supporting our sponsors: River Toyota Range Rover Briggs & Riley American Express The Bitcoin Way Public Onramp USPS SimpleMining Sound Advisory Shopify AT&T BAM Capital HELP US OUT! Help us reach new listeners by leaving us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts! It takes less than 30 seconds, and really helps our show grow, which allows us to bring on even better guests for you all! Thank you – we really appreciate it! Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm
Transcript
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You're listening to TIP.
My guest today is Richard Wilson.
Richard is the founder and CEO of the Family Office Club,
which is the number one family office association with over 4,000 registered family offices.
On episode 525 with Michael Sonnenfeld, we discussed how billionaires often grow their wealth
through owning assets usually their own business,
and how once they sell that asset for cash, they're often at a loss for how to invest it.
Well, Richard helps billionaires figure that out.
He's set up over 200 family offices, put on 150 events with billionaire speakers, written 13 books, and is currently on track to interview 100 billionaires to garner the essence of their success.
We chose to focus on his top five favorite books, written of course by billionaires, and we tease out the lessons from each one.
In this episode, you will learn what a family office is and how it works.
The first thing you should focus on when setting one up?
Key lessons from Richard's top five billionaire books.
insights from billionaire keynotes from his events including Jeff Hoffman, Grant Cardone, and others.
The strategies that Richard finds most useful and a whole lot more.
Richard is a wildly accomplished guy and we cover a lot of topics I think you'll find different and interesting.
So without further delay, here is my conversation with Richard Wilson.
You are listening to The Investors Podcast, where we study the financial markets and read the books that influence self-made billionaires the most.
We keep you informed and prepared for the unexpected.
Welcome to The Investors Podcast.
I'm your host, Trey Lockerbie, and today we have Richard Wilson on the show.
Richard, I'm so excited to have you.
Thanks for coming on.
Yeah, I appreciate being here.
So you and I have a lot in common.
We both study billionaires.
You are on track to interview 100 billionaires, and I think you're about a quarter of the way there.
You've gone so far as to set up billionaires.com, and you've provided a bunch of insights
and resources there, which is really cool. But you bring this whole other skill set and expertise
to the conversation because you've actually set up over 200 family offices at this point. You've
worked with a lot of these billionaires on actual deals and you know how they think, you know how
they operate, and you know the tax strategies and all these other things that they're looking
for. So I'm really excited to have you on the show. And I thought it'd be a good place to start
to first of all, talk about what a family office is and then maybe go into how you came to set up
200 or so of them now.
Yeah, sure, happy to do so.
So the business I set up 16 years ago and still operate is called the Family Office Club.
And it took us 12 years to buy billionaires.com.
We followed up every two to four months for over a decade.
And then they finally cracked on the price and we wore them down and acquired that.
So last year, I structured and sourced $85 million worth of transactions that we closed
with our clients.
And some of our clients are billionaires.
Some are sent to millionaires.
but I'm just curious why everyone doesn't want to study billionaires, right?
It's kind of like we were talking before the recording.
If you want to learn how to play basketball, you can study college athletes,
which would be average business book writers like myself.
I've written many books.
I'm not a billionaire.
Or you can go and study a book written by LeBron or Michael Jordan, you know, Larry Bird,
and you might as well start with the NBA players and not study the college players
because maybe the college players are good at marketing their book and making it look awesome.
But the end of the day, probably should study the billionaires first, right?
I totally agree. And on that note, you know, it's funny how people get off course maybe a little bit. I think it probably comes from what they teach in schools. I always had an issue following advice from anyone who hadn't been there done that. And as far as family offices go, how did you fall into that whole arena and get involved with this?
Well, I've been doing risk consulting and it was really boring, but I paid my MBA in cash. And then I said, okay, who else is going to pay a 21 year old kid, 100,000 a year? And I figured,
it was selling commercial real estate or raising capital. So I went to the capital raising world,
studied psychology of influence. And while raising capital, I started a website sharing information
on hedge funds, capital raising and family offices. And the family office content just took off.
There were no other thought leaders in the family office ultra wealthy niche that were really putting
out helpful information. It was just like a journalist article here and there. And so when we started
doing that, we got 3,000, 5,000, 7,000 hits a day to the website. I got on the front page of the Boston,
globe when I was 24 years old and I spoke in over 16 countries a couple hundred times and that's how
the family office club really got started. Well, you threw something interesting out there,
the psychology of influence. Are we talking about Chaldeenie's book or what do you mean by that?
And how did that get thrown into the mix there? I'm interested. Yeah, that got thrown to the mix
because I had always wanted to take some courses from Wharton or Harvard and then I was in
Harvard Square inside of the Kup Bookstore and somebody having a cup of coffee next to me,
he said, hey, I don't know if you've read this book before by Chaldingy, but it's amazing.
And he had me read it.
And I just said, wow, this is super powerful.
So our whole business is structured based on that.
And if you know the Cheldini influence principles, you'll know a few of them are have a
position of authority.
Scarcity adds to influence.
Reciprocation.
You do something for someone and want to do something back to you.
And then commitment and consistency.
And so what I've found is if you stack all those on top of each other and you consistently provide a lot of thought leadership to a very small niche group like ultra wealthy, super ultra wealthy families, and you do that over and over 16 years, just like you guys have with your podcast and I have a family office club and now billionaires.com that you enact all these different influence principles at once, right?
You get mass reciprocation across everybody giving your content.
You're very consistent with how you put out the content and it positions you as an authority on billionaires or starting.
in a family office, et cetera.
When you're just getting started, I understand you're building this platform and over time
that builds authority.
But how do you start, you know, as a 21-year-old kid, like you said, fresh out of MBA school?
What authority are you bringing to the table at that point?
Yeah, sure.
So I had no authority then.
I went and worked for a capital-raising placement agent firm.
And what I did is I asked them, like, well, will you hire me?
They said, no, we want people seven years experience who raised $100 million, so go away.
And I said, well, I'll quit my six-figure job at least for three days a week and I'll work for free for three days a week, calling investors for you to show you I can do the work and I'm a hard worker.
And you'll want to pay me after a few months.
So after a few months, he started paying me for one day a week and two days a week and three days a week.
And eventually he paid me to be there full time.
I took a big haircut on what I got paid, but I had potential commissions.
And then once we had brought in over $100 million in allocations, but my website was also taking off, he said, hey, look, I'm a regulated broker-dealer.
you have to either shut down the silly blog or leave the company.
And at that point, I was like, well, I'll just find another capital raising company
that would appreciate the exposure and the insights I'm getting by creating this website.
And by the time I got that next job offered, the blog was making me over six figures a year.
And we did seven figures in revenue or a third year in business 13 years ago.
But the real shortcut was I just studied everything going on in the industry like Mark Cuban
always recommends you do.
Just read everything possible in your industry, digest it, interpret it, put it back out,
there for other people who don't have time to go and read everything. And then when I got a book deal
with Wiley and I had bought Family Offices.com, I just interviewed 30 family offices and put all their
interviews in my book. And that showed everybody that I was very well connected and that I knew
out what I was talking about. And then everything just kind of snowballed from there.
So if the psychology of influence is in play for you, I'm curious if you also saw it in the billionaires
that you've studied now and interviewed throughout their career, have you seen them put into practice?
just these principles of authority, scarcity, reciprocation, consistency.
And yeah, I'm just curious if you've seen examples of that come up.
Yeah, for sure I have a couple times.
One is in Howard Mark's book called The Most Important Thing.
He talks about how they don't like to chase deals.
They like to be known in the industry.
So deals come to them so that when people come to them, they have a big edge because they're
the ones that are asking for the business.
They're not going out and asking to invest in somebody's deal.
And that way they get much, much better terms.
So that's kind of like an attraction factor type position instead of chasing people.
And then the other one is more generic across most types of billionaires is that there's the opposite of black male you could call, you know, white male or alpha male.
And it's basically it's nothing to do with your gender.
It's just basically that like when you, instead of saying if you do something, if you don't do something for me, I'm going to break your window.
So it's just an implied unsaid thing that if you can get in business with Oprah or Warren Buffett,
that really good things are going to happen.
You don't have to even say it out loud, right?
People feel that.
And so that position of authority as a titan in the industry, whether you're worth $100 million
or a billion, attracts business deals.
And one of the most important things I've learned in 16 years is that as a family office
or as an ultra wealthy investor or billionaire, your wealth will compound exponentially faster
if you can see deals first exclusively and at a better valuation than other people,
then you are going to compound your wealth very quickly.
And so I think that that's the most powerful thing that I could probably share from studying
the billionaires and starting up all these family offices.
If you're not known so well in your niche at least or the niche type of deal flow you want,
that you're not seeing deals first exclusively and at a better valuation,
then you're added disadvantage to what you could be at.
So it seems like as you become ultra wealthy like these people have become,
it's inevitable almost to set up something called a family office.
And maybe you found that some people are not even sure what a family office is even at their
success level, right?
But I'm curious, can you explain to us what a family office is and also what it isn't?
Sure.
Yeah.
So a family office is just a ultra wealthy investment management, wealth management solution.
It really manages many aspects of their life.
The reason why it's important is if you're worth $1 million and you mess up a tax filing
or one of your two LLCs you have in place, et cetera,
maybe the penalty is $1,000 or you lose $1,000 because you made a mistake on a filing date.
When you become wealthier and you have dozens of LLCs and 100 employees or 1,000 employees,
etc, one little mistake could cost you $50,000, $400,000, maybe $4 million.
And as you grow, you get busier and busier and your time is worth more per hour.
So you just need people around you helping you allocate capital, make things more tax-efficient,
make sure the investment you want to make today is going out of the right structure
at the right time that reporting is done and systematically track all your holdings and K-1s
and LLCs.
And you're more likely to make a mistake the busier you get.
And each mistake costs you much, much more.
And then you probably are very powerful at creating new wealth.
And so you doing everything makes less and less sense as you build teams around you.
You should only be doing what your best ability allows you to do or your unique ability,
as Dan Sullivan says often.
And so I think that's really critical.
And there's three types of family offices.
There's a virtual family office for those that.
are worth 10, 20, 50 million, maybe $100 million or a little bit more.
And that's a super lean family office structure.
We don't have very many full-time employees.
It's usually just remote, maybe a half-time CEO, half-time CEO, etc.
And then you can have a single family office, which is full-fledged.
You might have two, three, five, ten full-time employees, even dozens or 100-plus full-time
employees.
And then you could have a multifamily office, which is really just a wealth advisor who's
geared everything towards the super ultra wealthy. And some of those will take in $10 million net worth
clients. Others have a minimum of $100 million net worth per client. But virtual family office,
single family office and multifamily office are the three main types. But people throw around the
term, you know, and some people who are really just raising capital say, oh, we have a family
office. But next minute you talk to them, they're trying to sell you their real estate deal and
they're really just syndicating real estate. So, you know, we have to watch out for a legitimate
one versus ones that try to look like one, but are really just an investment company.
So you mentioned the virtual family office is around 10 million and up, let's say, because
even at a part-time CFO or part-time staff, that's also, those are real costs that you're incurring,
right? So you need to cover those costs and then some and make sure they're paying for themselves
and getting good returns. So I imagine there's a certain threshold that you have to kind of achieve
in order for that to make sense. Is that around the $10 million mark or where have you seen it
to make the most sense to get started? Right around the $10 million mark. It also depends on how
complex your portfolio is. When you get beyond owning your primary home and let's say your other
investments are just a wealth advisor and maybe one or two past homes you used to live in and one or two
vacation homes, once you get beyond that level of complexity and you start doing angel investments
or operating business investments and real estate syndications and passive deals and you're
at LP in funds and you have half a dozen extra LLCs, etc. You're starting to feel the need
because the level of chaos around you is growing,
and then your net worth is growing so much,
you say to yourself,
I want to make less expensive mistakes that feel dumb,
and I want to move faster and play a greater offense.
Most of the really ultra-wealthy families I know specialize
to just one or two niches,
maybe three at most,
where they're playing offense,
and then they have a strong defensive team and strategy.
They're not playing all defense,
just diversifying into 400 niches.
They're having three segments of their portfolio.
They have their wealth advisor,
usually just one, sometimes maximum three, and that's pure defense, really.
And then they have their real estate allocation.
If they didn't make their money in that niche, they usually do a percentage of real estate
development, a large chunk of cash flowing real estate, and that's sleep at night money that
should grow and match inflation over the long term.
And then the third niche area is really where they play offense.
And that's their operating business niche, where they created their wealth or those
one or two areas where they want to really be strategically hands-on involved.
As far as family offices go, is that itself a legal entity?
Do most people set up LLCs?
Do they roll up all their many other LLCs under one roof?
How does that all look?
Yeah, sure.
Many times it can be helpful and advantageous to have a LLC or a business structure around
the actual family office entity.
It allows you to write off more things that otherwise might be scrutinized, such as
traveling with family members or going somewhere to look at assets together with family members.
someone might say, oh, is that really a business expense?
But then you can show that this is our P&L of this business.
So many times that is done.
Many times a lot of restructuring is needed, not so much because of the family office LLC
needing to be the managing member of every other LLC, perhaps.
But just because as an entrepreneur is moving very quickly, they might invest in a company
and then didn't really read the fine print of the operating agreement inside of that company.
And what was promised over email was never put into and baked into the operating agreement.
There's a lot of cleanup work in general needed there, and then a lot of trust in estate planning work.
So many times the proactive tax planning, the estate planning, and then the direct investment
strategy work more than pays for all the costs of the family office through the gains the family
gets from that.
Since we're on the topic of family offices, I'm curious, maybe walk us through the first
priorities you tackle when you're setting up a family office.
Where would you start?
Sure. We first talk about what their values and objectives are. Is your goal to spend one hour a week on
email and phone calls and spend the rest of the time on the beach? Is your goal to grow from 200 million
net worth to be worth $2 billion? Is your goal to donate a billion dollars in your life or to
pass on $100 million to your kids? So all of those goals are meaning a different investment
of your time, different level of cost, different level of complexity in your family office.
you want to just play pure defense and go for income portfolio.
It's completely different than what you should do if you want to quadruple your net worth
in 10 years, right?
And so all of that, the most important thing is that you really customize it to who you are
and what your values and objectives are.
And that's where we always start.
There's otherwise every hour of time you spend or dollar you spend and who you hire,
it completely changes.
And while it's so obvious that every company should have their company values and
everybody talks about that, just in any undergrad,
to a business school course, what I find is that most families, even ultra wealthy families,
don't have their family values.
And so having your family values above your kitchen table and having those around in your house,
so your family unit, your family office is acting in line with those values.
And you hire and fire investment managers based on that is really important.
So like two of my business partners in one entity are Eagle Scouts.
And I happen to be an Eagle Scout as well.
And we were comparing three different capital partners that were all willing to provide
all the capital we needed to scale this platform.
And we said, well, let's just, it's apples to oranges in terms of the actual investment terms.
So let's select them based on their values.
And kind of half jokingly, we said like, well, if they don't really fit the Boy Scout law,
the 12 values of being in the Boy Scouts, then they're an outlaw and we just don't do business with
them, you know?
And so not having your values and objectives and your mission of your family office identified
means we can't really work with the family yet in a way that respects their interests
because we don't really know exactly where they want to go.
And if nobody's asked them those questions before, they might not know exactly
where they want to go. And so you'll sometimes talk to people in the family office space and they'll say,
oh, yeah, we'll look at anything. But, you know, really, do you want to invest in a dry cleaner in
Australia that's just a startup? Probably not, right? Like, you probably have some areas that you are more
interested in and are the best use of your time while other people diversify you into other areas.
So we help set up family offices at no cost. We end up just doing business with them over time,
but we earn their respect in time by saying, well, instead of just buying, you know, some auto parts
companies, why don't you buy a top three distributor of auto parts on a direct-to-consumer
website, that's where the trend's going, and buy otoparts.com or whatever it would be,
and then find a top five Amazon distributor and buy one of them as well.
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Talk to us about what strategies are available to family offices that are not available
elsewhere, if any.
And maybe it's for, you know, when you achieve a certain ultra wealthy level or status,
do things open up to you at that point or get easier?
Yeah, really great question.
And that auto part example, the reason why that's so powerful is now every company you go to in the auto part space, you can say, oh, well, we can boost you through our Amazon division.
We can boost you up and put you on the front page of our website.
Or your best deal flow might come from looking at the website, see who's selling a lot, negotiate with the top three in that category, and then boost them to be number one and the exclusive person sold on that website.
And so leveraging things like that, it's basically a strategic choke point, is one of those strategies that you can.
do as your business becomes more sophisticated. And a lot of these families, they look at things like
a chessboard, like, okay, this business moves forward and makes me smarter in this way. Or like in
Steve Schwartzman's book, what it takes, he talks about how doing M&A work and also LBO work, create
consistent fees and then big jumps and profits when things go well. But then let's say they take
a head partner at Goldman Sachs and commodities and they open a commodities division, that now informs
their other divisions. So if they know commodity sales are about to tank, they can write in an
option on a railroad deal in their LBO division to lower the price of that acquisition based on
having extra information that other people don't have. And in the public markets, extra information
is sometimes insider trading and illegal and you go to jail. In the private markets,
and many times it just means you're a better investor and you're smarter and can move with more
high conviction. And the other thing is that many times when people come to you and they really want
your help, like we had a deal last year where the company wanted us to invest. And so we bought five percent
of the company, but we only invested 2.5%. They gave us the rest in advisory shares. We had another
company last year that gave us 33% of their company to help them strategically grow and scale that
because they knew the company would become much, much larger if they could plug into our investor
club and our family office relationships. And so big families, when they grow a reputation of
being very strategically helpful and having a lot of ownership of choke points and influence and
distribution, they'll get sweetheart deals where the valuation is so good for them.
They also, like Warren Buffett always negotiates extra warrants or extra collateral, etc.
And it's just like an amazing deal because they really want to do the deal with him and not
somebody else.
So that's the most powerful thing that you can do.
And that goes back to the seeing deals first exclusively and at a better valuation.
So getting used to like, how do you structure writer participation?
How do you do an equity cap or an equity warrants or a gross revenue royalty deal?
or have a structure that aligns everybody.
So everyone gets paid handsomely,
but you as an investor get all your money back first.
And a lot of people in their first decade of being ultra wealthy
don't focus on investment structure enough.
And so you can take an average deal.
And if you structure it well,
it can turn it into an amazing deal.
And if you take an amazing deal and you structure it very poorly,
then it can be really bad for you.
You have no collateral.
You get none of the income.
The person running the deal gets all the profits first.
And so we really emphasize this in our work with clients
and everything else we do.
So a lot of our investments I talked about in medical practices and the short-term rental
properties, those are all structured.
So investors get all of their money back first or double their money before any asset
management fees are charged.
And I think that's the wave of the future as investment organizations get more and more
aligned in the future.
When you mentioned the gross royalty deal, what's coming to my mind is Mr. Wonderful on
Shark Take and he's pitching these royalty deals.
And then they kind of seem to get a bad rap.
You know, you see the other sharks, you know, dogging them for it.
being like, come on, man, but you're saying this is more of the future. I'm kind of curious,
what is the incentive for the company to take this on? They don't seem very advantageous to the
person on the other side, I guess is what I'm saying. So how do you get over that? Yeah, we can do a
whole episode just on royalties. And I would love to do it because I just love this topic. Of all the
family offices I've spoken to in 16 years, I've met one family from Norway that's ever done a royalty
deal. It's very uncommon. But it can be structured to be really great for the business owner,
or be really great for the investor, or be really balanced. But it's just a nice way to a
align yourself. And so a few examples of why it's great for the business owner. Sometimes in a
medical practice deal, we will bring in investors. And then the investor will get a certain treatment,
let's say 3% of gross revenues until they double their money. Now they've already
doubled their money and they could be out of the deal at that point and capped the 2x return.
Sometimes we'll structure in a ride of participation. So when the medical practice sells
to private equity one day, they get an extra little boost of their return.
Other times they might get their equity reduced from 10% to 2% because they've already doubled their money or some sort of treatment like that.
And it allows the company owner to grow and not be diluted as much.
If you're diluted permanently, like people on Inc 500 have often sold their soul and they only own 12% of their own company.
So it's great that they're big.
But is it really their company anymore?
They almost have a job at some point because some of them only own one or two percent.
And so you can use royalties to protect equity and make it so you get all the capital you need.
And you only get diluted by one or two percent each time you raise capital instead 10 percent, 20 percent, 30 percent, right out of the gates getting massively diluted. Or it could be flipped the other way and made really good for the investor or right down the middle. Like with a manufacturing company or another medical practice deal they did, you get all your money off the table off a royalty and then you're just an equity holder or just an equity warrant holder at the end of the day. So there's 100 options on how to structure all of that. But it's just like you can make it really good for either party or right down the middle. But people like to complain.
about Mr. Wonderful because it's comical in part. And sometimes lots of the shark steals are
sometimes ridiculous turns, right? I understand you don't want to be diluted. And that makes a lot of
sense. But you find contrary ideas around this. For instance, I was watching the Richard Branson
documentary on HBO, which is great. But a fact pops out at you that's kind of surprising.
He has 400 companies and he, I wouldn't say only, but he's only, you know, worth $4 billion,
which is obviously a ton of money. But for a guy who owns 400 companies,
You know, it's almost on the low end of net worth.
And so I'm kind of curious that that's obviously because he's partner with many people.
He's, he's diluted himself.
He's gotten other folks in the ring.
And I know that you've actually also interviewed Mark Cuban.
And one of his pieces of advice of where people go wrong seemingly was around not giving up
equity, not incentivizing those around you to share in the success and get them motivated,
everyone rowing in the same direction.
So dilution, yes, can be bad, but also there's strategic ways to use it as well.
And I'm kind of curious where you kind of fall in that philosophy if you go either way on it.
Right, right.
Yeah, for sure.
So if you have a chance to do a deal with a billionaire, their level of sophistication is max.
They're at institutional level or above.
And so the terms are going to have to give to them and a dilution you might need to do to get them on board is going to be different.
They may still appreciate having a gross revenue royalty until at least their principal gets off the people.
And now they can recycle that cash into the next deal.
They might put $10 million in your company.
you might not have an exit for 12 years,
but maybe they get that $10 million out through royalties over three years.
Now they can put $10 million in the next company
and do the same thing over and over again
while still having a decent equity stake.
And they may feel more comfortable doing that
and owning 20% of your company or 40%
instead of owning 25% or 45%
because now their money is freed up and they're not illiquid
for a decade crossing their fingers.
You're going to have some magical exit to Amazon
like the ring company did.
So I think that's really important to know
the higher the level of sophistication,
typically the more that the investor does not want to be capped at a 2x return in the now.
They want the upside for the risk they're taking.
But everybody that I know would rather not be illiquid forever and just be playing with house money
and get their initial investment off the table.
And now everybody can be winning together more handsomely as true partners.
Now you're not at risk of losing the other person's money and it's just playing for the upside.
And I really like one thing they say in Shark Tank is about one of the points I made earlier.
They basically say, oh, yeah, that's great that you raised it.
the $7 million valuation for your Nothing Burger mobile app idea that's mostly a dream.
But now you're in the shark tank and you only have 400K in revenue.
So if you want my partnership, it's 25% equity.
You know, it's done to be dramatic on TV and somewhat comical.
But, you know, that's what some people can't say in exact words.
But basically, if you want the attention of a big strategic partner, you're going to have
give them different terms.
And we had one group in our investor club who basically had 30 million of asset center
management and they got an offer from a billionaire work with.
to invest $250 million into their strategy over time.
But it was interesting, it's talking to them, they said, hey, these terms look harsh.
I mean, I don't think these are fair terms.
I said, okay, well, if you want to go out and compare it against other institutional term
sheets, you know, please do.
I mean, what do you think?
Like, what terms look worse than other term sheets you've gotten from people offering
a quarter of a billion dollars?
And they said, oh, well, we've never seen another term sheet from anyone else at that level.
So, okay, well, feel free to go and shop it around.
And if anyone will even let you see a term sheet, much less offer you one, then we can compare it.
And people are afraid of getting a Scotty Piffin contract.
I get it.
And that's important to think about long term.
But you can skip college ball and AAA minor league baseball and go straight to the major leagues if you want to operate on these terms.
So I think that's important to say for those who are looking to partner with bigger families.
Now talk to us about Warrens because I know that you are a big believer in focusing almost more on Warrens than Equip.
wherever possible, which makes sense because for those who don't know, warrants are essentially options for people who aren't working in the business. So you're getting this coupon on the company or, you know, of that price baked in that you can purchase at a certain point later on, which makes sense. I'm kind of curious in other ways that you might look to prioritize warrants over equity at the start of the deal.
Right. So this could be said from a few different directions. One is the benefit to the company owner is maybe if they're getting their money back and they just participate when you sell the company.
Now you've gotten them liquid back in their pocket now.
And then they can cross their fingers,
but they don't have their money at risk of losing all their money if you don't make it.
Right.
So that could be good for both people because if they have straight equity,
you owe them a dividend check every time you take profits out as a business owner.
So that actually benefits the company owner in that way.
One thing to try to do if you're an investor is have the right of participation at the sale
or the equity warrant not expire.
You know, if you just have a right of participation of X percent when they sell the company one day
and it doesn't have an expiration date, they could raise money 10 more times.
And if you had equity, you would be diluted 10 more times.
But if you just have that right of participation that doesn't expire based on the terminal
sale, then you may be able to participate there without having to respond to capital calls
and without having to get diluted 10 more times.
So that is something important to consider as well.
Most equity warrants do have a dollar amount for share value that you have to invest
within a certain time period.
And if the company greatly grows, then you'll be very happy.
to buy at that $4 million valuation when the company's worth $40 million, of course.
So it can still be a great deal.
But if you get in a company early enough, you might build and negotiate something where you
don't get diluted over time and don't even have to invest anything more in the future.
Interesting.
So the participation rights, you know, connected with a royalty deal potentially are interesting
because you're still getting the right to put in some more money or to purchase some shares
at a certain point.
But that's actually separate from the warrant itself.
Right.
A right of participation could just be when the company sells for $100 million and you're getting
4% of it.
You're getting a $4 million participation in that.
But it's almost like the equity doesn't activate until that sale happens.
When we talk to medical practice owners, a lot of times they say, well, we need to recruit
doctor talent more to scale our five or 10 or 20 location medical practice platform.
We want to grow to $100 million or a billion dollar valuation.
And, you know, we can go and get debt or we can sell our sole to private equity and now we have a job.
And so they don't have the time to go.
and raise money from other family offices.
They don't know how to navigate that.
And then worse yet is that they don't know how to structure it.
So they'll give away 20, 40% equity.
And they will not know that there are other options to do that.
And so it becomes a time suck.
And then they have no idea that these other structures are open.
So we just love working with the doctors because they usually have gone to school for a decade.
They then did a residency, started their medical practice.
They're very unlikely to run away to Venezuela on us when we trust them with our
investors money.
They sell at really high multiples once you have 10 and 12 locations.
or more. So we're always looking at, you know, what's crowded in the investor space and then
what is a niche that is not crowded yet, but it's going to have big future demand. And we've
learned that from working with the only offices as well. You don't want to play the same game
that everyone else is playing. You want to do something unique and has a real high conviction edge
over what kind of the masses are doing in your space. I want to talk a little bit more about the
billionaires you work with and have also interviewed. I was recently speaking with Michael
Sonnenfeld, who founded Tiger 21, which is a billionaire club. And, you know, you know,
you know, high net worth individual club. And he mentioned that for, I don't know, the last 23 years,
real estate had been the number one strategy. And only in the last year. So it's, it's actually
slipped down to, I think, the number three spot. And that's behind private equity,
Publix and then now real estate. So private equity has seen this huge increase. And I'm kind of
curious, you know, how that's come back into vogue a little bit from, you know, you mentioned LBOs
earlier. And you think about the 80s and when everyone was getting into that, but it seems like it's
becoming popular again. I'm kind of curious what you're seeing on that.
What I'm seeing is that a lot of people can conduct these benchmark surveys and they're always delayed by a good amount.
And at the end of this last cycle before rates had gone up the last four or five times, they were just starting to go up.
A lot of the smarter investors in real estate were like, well, the Fed has signaled we're going to raise rates.
And so we know real estate is going to take this hit.
So they're looking for something that can force the appreciation and still grow.
And perhaps an exciting private equity opportunity could be that.
but technology investment flows are down right now.
Real estate flows are way down.
Cannabis flows are down 90% or last 18 months.
So I think flows across the board are down a whole lot.
But what's really exciting about that is that one of the,
like I'm reading every book I can from billionaires.
And one of the most surprisingly good ones is from Howard Marks.
And it's not surprising because I didn't think he wasn't an intelligent person,
but sometimes when you think of a hedge fund billionaire,
you might think it's going to come off as dry and analytical.
But one of his books,
the most important thing is really great.
And he talks about how when there is perceived risk and people start to sit on their hands
instead of allocate to things,
that is when there is less risk because now you're getting a 20,
25% discount.
So in investor residences.com,
our average discount is 23.5% on each property we're buying.
And we're offering all cash,
high earnest money,
14 to 40 day closing.
and there's no bank involved.
And the average home that goes under contract has a 27% chance of not closing right now
because the bank doesn't approve something at the last minute or ask for 19 things the night
before closing like they love to do.
So we just take banks out of the equation.
And Howard Marks emphasizes that you should be pessimistic when others are optimistic.
And everyone's heard, oh, you should invest when there's blood on the streets.
But to actually do that takes some courage.
And no one can time the bottom perfectly.
So layering into the bottom is one lesson.
to take from Howard Marks is just that the more that other people see risk, the more that there's
actually less risk in the market. And I think that's an important point to point out in terms of
like where flows are going and when they're going in what direction. You know that saying about
investing when there's blood in the streets? I always feel like it was missing a piece because
usually some of your own blood is in that street. And that's what makes it hard, right? It's not just
the blood in the streets. It's like you are probably bleeding yourself, which is why it's so hard to do
this and I don't feel like that gets enough appreciation.
Yeah, for sure.
And it's not popular.
Other people say, why are you buying?
Why are you buying?
Like literally yesterday, someone was like, well, why are you buying at the top?
It doesn't make any sense to buy at these peak prices.
And we say, well, no, we're near the top right now.
If you're paying what the market was at before rates got raised, then you're getting
a raw deal for sure.
You know, deals have come down across the board in my experience.
And you might still have to look at 300 deals to get one or two amazing deals done as
the nature of any market. But yeah, you're totally right. It could be your own pain and suffering
and kind of licking your own wounds, but then trying to press forward versus doing that at the top
the market. Some other billionaires you've interviewed have stood out to me. One was Jeff Hoffman,
and that's because through your family office club and others, you've done over 150, I think,
events with billionaire speakers and all kinds of amazing guests. But Jeff has been a recurring guest,
and I know that he's stood out to you as one of the best billionaire speakers you've had at these
events. So he's an entrepreneur. Maybe tell those who aren't familiar with Jeff, who he is and why
he's the best billionaire speaker you've had at your events. Sure. Yeah. Yeah, he's better.
He added more value than any family office or billionaire or billion dollar plus family office
CEO we've had for a few reasons. And for those of you don't know, Jeff Hoffman,
should definitely go and see him speak in person sometime. He spoke at our annual event,
the family office super summit. We had 800 and some people.
in the room. And the demographic was your average investment event, maybe 48 to 54 year old,
you know, mostly males, unfortunately. We wish there's more females in the space. That's just how
it is right now. And half of the room was in tears from his talk. And he basically, he created the airport
check-in kiosk. He loves travel. He's a passion for travel. It's been to 150 countries. And he also is
early investor in priceline.com and booking.com.
And what he talks about is that you don't, you know, making a lot of money here is not an
evil thing. And sometimes the media is like, oh, this, this wealthy person and it makes them
look really evil in every way possible. But there's nothing wrong with being super wealthy.
It's just wrong if you don't do anything good with your money. And so it kind of flips on its
head of like, well, you know, I guess if you're a bad person, then more bad things happen on
planet earth. If you become wealthy and if you're a good person, then more good things happen.
And it really secured inside me the feeling that as business people, we should go out of our way to help people who are good people and make their capital platforms grow and back them and turn our backs on people who are unethical and not good and are not honest.
And sometimes that's not always the easiest thing to do.
Sometimes there's a connection through a client with someone who claims they're worth a billion dollars.
But you do a background check and we found 14 negative events where they had signed a contract and left the person, for example.
or we basically found that what they were claiming was not true when talking to actual companies.
We just had to tell them, okay, this isn't a good fit for us, even though it's connected
through an important client.
Like, we just can't work with you.
So it's just as important to help those who are really good people as it is to turn your
back on those that you think maybe potentially a fraud or just unethical or slick or just
constantly highly stressed out people or something's off about them and you don't know what.
That's our goal there.
But that's why we like Jeff so much.
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All right. Back to the show.
You mentioned some billionaire books and why it's always great to go to the source.
And I'd like to pick out five billionaire books that stand out to you.
And I'd like to tease out maybe one to two insights from each and go one by one and just
kind of, I'd just be curious to know if we can compare notes on a few things here.
So you mentioned Howard Marks' book, obviously an amazing book.
What other books, say, top five, stand out to you from billionaires that you've read?
Yeah, sure.
My favorite one is Steve Schwartzman's book, What It Takes.
I've listened to it twice on Audible.
I'll probably listen to it at least once a year for the next couple of years.
We talked a little bit earlier about how different parts of your business can inform the other division.
Not only makes it more diversified company, but being smart in this one area,
it makes you a lot more effective maybe in other areas.
He also talks about how he likes to do really big things that can have big consequences.
Instead of spending time on chasing a bunch of little rabbits,
He wants to focus on one elephant and get that done within different business segments and units.
And he also talks about just an expectation of excellence across his organization and anything
less than excellence will not be tolerated.
And that's something I've found through several billionaires is their expectation of excellence
and just finding people who can do that and perform at that level and otherwise they don't
remain on the team.
So for the first book, you know, it would be what it takes by Steve Schwartzman.
And I think everyone who listens to that would get a ton of value out of it.
Yeah.
And for those who may not be familiar, Steve Schwartzman is the chief executive officer of Blackstone.
So probably most have heard of Blackstone, but maybe not Steve himself.
That's a great book.
Let's move on.
What's another book that stands out to you?
Yeah, sure.
I can go through a couple others here.
So another one is How to Win of the Sport of Business by Mark Cuban.
If you haven't read any books from a billionaire before, this one is not hard.
It's like an hour and a half.
You'll get through it quickly and you'll start to see why you should only read books written by billionaires until you run out of them logically.
And Mark talks about how business is a 24-7, 365 game, and the person who knows the most is going to have a huge advantage.
And so reading everything possible on your niche, becoming really over-specialized and informed helps a lot.
But also the side effect of that is you become really connected and well-networked over time.
And then his message to our community when interviewing him was just that you should be kind and generous with others because people think in business you have to be a jerk to win.
And sometimes on Shark Tank or in the media and the sidelines of a basketball game, he can be portrayed as an earface person who's really direct or aggressive.
But he basically says you have to treat others well and get them to like and want to work with you.
It's not about just being a jerk and ordering people around.
So those are some of the insights I took from him.
And then at our New York event last year, we had the founder of E-Channel, Larry Namer.
He spoke on stage with like a fireside chat with him.
He sold for $3 billion to Comcast.
And what was most interesting about him is that nowhere along the way did he have a grueling,
grinded out mentality, work ethic.
Like Steve Schwartzman will say, I sleep five hours a night.
I'm up at four him every day.
I'm high energy and I do this, this and this.
He doesn't say the only reason he's successful is he gets up at 4 a.m.
But that's how his work ethic is.
You know, he will mark Cuban say like that he will outwork you and he will out, you know,
research and study the space.
And Larry had a totally different perspective.
He just said to hire people that are much smarter than him.
And I think that's important for people to hear because it's unusual.
And, you know, you hear Ariana Huffington say, oh, you know, you have to sleep.
You have to take care of your body and your health because she passed out and like
broke her chin or something.
on a desk because she hadn't slept in a couple of days and was working too much.
But when people hear that and they know that you did work that hard for 15 years first,
and now you're all about meditation and only working X number of hours a day,
you kind of say, okay, but you grinded for 15, 17 years.
And if you didn't do that, maybe you wouldn't be Ariana Huffington, right?
So it's good to hear from someone who from the beginning was always like that versus a convert.
And then Larry just focused on creating something really unique, a low cost basis.
He was basically saying, like, well, we can get access to this movie trailer content for no cost.
They'll pay us to put out their movie trailer content.
So our cost of production is really low on creating this content.
It was just a very unique model.
And it just exploded and grew really quickly in popularity.
And then just being really humble was something that Larry suggested.
Both him and Jeff Hoffman, when they get off stage, they sat around networked with people for a couple hours and just chatted with everybody in the audience.
You know, they didn't have, you know, who we going to talk about next.
Cardone, or I'm sure if Steve Schwarsman came, I doubt he would hang out for a couple hours and
just chill and chat with anyone who wants to chat. You know, they're on a mission and they've
got 400 things a day to do. So definitely the humbleness came off on stage and we've got that
recording on Billionaires.com as well. And then the final one is Grant Cardone. I've read several
of his books. His personality might not be for everybody. He's a smart guy and he's a lot of strategies
that definitely work and he's built a big brand for himself. And some of the insights,
from his books is just to be obsessed or be average.
And that relates to Mark Cuban's idea of being all over a niche or saturating a niche,
almost monopolizing a niche, to be doggedly persistent and stay after something until you get it done.
And that's something I can really relate to.
A lot of the best deals we've ever done either took us years of follow-up, 100 plus emails,
or they literally told us in many cases our best deals we've gotten done.
They told us, go away.
This deal is never going to get done.
You're wasting your time.
you're wasting our time, and then we change the investment structure and we get the deal done.
Or we keep following up another eight years and we get the deal done.
So that's one thing that I got from Cardone just to encourage me to continue to keep doing that,
because that's what's made him successful.
And then the last thing I'd say with Cardone is just that his ability to transfer his knowledge
and go into real estate and raise a billion dollars of equity and convert into being a
decently large player in the real estate space, not that a billion dollars is
a lot of AUM for real estate, but he was able to take someone from one industry and then leverage
it into a hard asset space. It's something that we do take some inspiration from because of
what we're doing at the medical practices and then investor residences.com. You know,
we're different personality, different business, different strategies. But that was one takeaway we had
just from like giving, he spoke at our events maybe three times now. I've got to meet with his team
several times and been on his podcast. That point that Mark Cuban brought up about just being a nice
person and how far that can get you and how underappreciated that is and how people think you need
to be ruthless. They hear these stories about, I don't know, Elon Musk cutting, slashing half the
company or Steve Jobs or Bill Gates berating people in a conference room. I mean, you hear about this
stuff and you hear these guys are ruthless. But I just have to point out that from interviewing a
few billionaires on this show, they always seem to be the nicest people that I've interviewed.
And it's come up. I mean, not that everyone isn't nice, but they are especially warm and nice
and easy to talk to most of the time. And I find that so interesting just in contrast with probably
more of a causation there than a correlation, actually. So that point that you brought about
Grant Cardone is interesting because I believe he raised that billion dollars from social media,
which I think was unheard of at that point in time and pretty innovative on his part. But when he was
talking about putting that in the hard assets, as you mentioned, he said that owning a single
family home or the idea of investing and owning a single family home is, quote, dead, which I find
really interesting. And I don't know if that was a sign of the times before interest rates had started
going back up and maybe markets were changing. But what do you think was the basis for that comment?
And do you think he was on to something there? Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, he likes to say something.
He'll say things that are polarizing and 25% of people are like, oh, my God, I can't believe
you just said that. That's so rude or whatever.
And so you have to know that about his marketing persona.
Right is kind of like he does that on purpose, I believe, and he's good at it.
And he's built a huge brand, so more power to him for pulling it off and not offending people as much as Trump while still using that strategy, I think.
And so that's part of it.
Part of it, I think, was him making a point that multifamily gets valued at such a low cap rate, compressed cap rate compared to a single family residential asset that all else equal, why would you put your money in buying a couple more vacation?
homes. And then the, you know, his conclusion, I think is like, maybe you should put some
money with with me and in our multifamily deals or in somebody's multifamily deals. It was just a
better space for your money was his argument. Obviously, sophisticated investors in the space
know that SFR build a rent communities are being sold at just about the same cap rates as a,
is a multifamily asset. This is basically a horizontal multifamily asset. And so people can argue
against what he said. And I have never said buying a single family home is, is garbage.
because we're buying a transaction with those every three to five weeks in our fund, of course.
But I think that's partially why he said that just because the multifamily space has so much
money chasing it. And over the long term, you know, lots of people have done quite well until
probably about February, March last year, what's been happening as rates go up, especially
those that had no interest rate insurance in place or had bridge loans or floating rate loans,
etc. Now what happens is people go to the table to buy a multifamily asset from someone who's really
excited to exit as rates went up. And the person says, well, wait, rates went up three times since we put our
offer in. And I know you have 80K of our escrow money, but the property is now worth 400K less or
four million less. Maybe they have a million of their escrow money, but the property is worth
four million less. And then meanwhile, they locked up another property right next door for three or four
million less. They say, hey, we're just going to break this contract. You know, Merry Christmas. You can
keep our 80K or our 1 million, or you can meet us in the middle, reduce the price by 2 million
or 2.5 million, and then we'll still close. And if you have to relist this property, you're
going to be in another 60 to 90 day closing. That rates will go up again. And the next person
will probably do the exact same thing to you. So just meet us in the middle. So it's somewhere
fair. So we don't look down to our investors. You don't look down to yours. And we're both
halfway happy, halfway not happy. So that's important to know. It's just that that just shows the
type of discounts that are happening across the board with luxury homes or multi-family.
It happens to all areas of real estate as rates go up.
Walk us through how you organize your own investments or how you kind of strategize,
you know, allocating throughout these different, even entities that you've set up.
When I look at putting my money to work, we're continually getting better and better terms on,
so we have, you know, equity in 23, soon 24 medical practices doing the 45 million of revenue there.
And then on the investor residences side, and those are one-off deals, it's not a fund.
On the investor residences.com side, we can do one-off deals if we want to, but the main
offering is a fund.
And I have just under the $1 million mark of my cash and the fund alongside my investors,
but basically that makes it so I'm an LP in my own fund.
And then that can help grow our balance sheet because we want to grow a 500 or 1,000
asset portfolio of short-term rental properties.
And the key thing is that from learning from billionaires,
tie it back to your show here,
is that they don't do things where they're playing the same game as everyone else.
That's why we have different investment structures we use.
We see a big opportunity in providing the growth capital to medical practices
versus just buying them or providing them debt like most other people.
And then in the short-term rental space,
less than 1% of it is owned by institutions.
So we think if we build a thousand asset portfolio,
there's going to be many institutions that would like to get diversification into that.
So we're pretty conservative on that.
But we try to stay focused on those two platforms for 90% of our energy and then just help
people set up family offices and see how we could be keeping them in mind to source
things for their portfolio.
When I was talking to Michael Sonnenfeld recently, he brought up this really interesting
point from his experience with Tiger 21, which is that he's seen a lot of these
billionaires who are entrepreneurs and that takes a certain skill set, certain mindset,
and they grow these businesses and sell them.
and they're often very bad investors from that, which I never heard before and I just thought
was such an interesting perspective.
I'm kind of curious if you've had a similar experience where you've met folks who have
become these billionaires, but it's more through compounding probably their own business
and then not being really savvy when it comes to actual investments or having the patience
that's needed because, you know, like you mentioned with some of these other billionaires,
they're action-packed sometimes, right, when they're so hardworking and driven as they
usually are.
Right. Yeah, great point. So the thing is they might be a Titan in their industry. Like, let's say they make zippers and they're like the zipper titan and everyone knows them and wants to work with them. They may not know though how to invest outside of that niche or even how to structure deals because maybe the structuring was done by an investment banker for their company. So what happens is that their knowledge runs super deep in that level in that area for 30 years. But then they're a relative infant in the area of choosing a wealth advisor or a
diversifying across different direct investments or investing into real estate.
And a couple things happen often.
And these are $10 million mistakes that get made by billionaires is that they'll trust
whoever has access to them.
And because of that trust, they'll go forward with a deal that they really shouldn't be
doing if they really compared it to other deals in the market.
They're not familiar with common deal terms.
So we have a $150 million net worth family.
And they showed us a deal that had a 5% a year return.
And it had their money at risk in the deal.
And every other deal I've seen of that type was 9 to 12%.
Like, why would you only do this for a 5% return?
This makes no sense.
They said, oh, well, we just didn't know.
But they were about to pull the trigger and put seven figures into that.
And so they don't know what they don't know.
And the worst mistake I see is that they think they're being smart because wealth advisors
just bang the drama diversification.
And that's all they hear diversify diversify.
But it's diversification when it comes to direct investments typically.
So you want to diversify in public markets.
You want to diversify maybe across a few food groups of real estate and a few brain
trust within each of those food groups, perhaps even. But with operating businesses and direct
investments in the area where you made your money and you want to play offense, diversifying
could be potentially a really bad idea. You can't invest in 19 different operating business
niches and want full control and be really smart at 19 different niches. You're smart at zippers.
Maybe you have a passion for stem cells. You want to start reading everything you can on stem
sales, go to stem cell investment events, look at 80 pitch decks on stem cells, hire a consultant on
stem cells, make small little test investments on stem cells, okay, you become pretty smart,
even in 12 months or three years doing that and then pull the trigger on some larger investments.
And I think that that's what's lost.
A lot of times people have this exit.
Then they start allocating a million here, three million there, 200k there, and they're
funding somebody else's dream and they're just looking for someone unsophisticated with
deep pockets who would just fund it without really thinking, is this strategic, is this
in line of my values, my objectives, is this a direct investment that makes sense as part
of my portfolio and the chess board I'm trying to set up for myself.
And Warren Buffett says that in the game of investments, you don't strike out by not swinging
at three in a row.
You can just not swing for as long as you want to until there's an amazing pitch that's
right in your sweet spot.
And you know you could nail that deal.
And then you can swing hard at that.
And so I think that's just important for the ultra wealthy to hear is that it's okay
to pass on a lot of things.
And you should have a strategic game plan and not just be investing based on what
randomly falls in your lap and not in too many angel investments and startup seed capital investments
unless it's in the niche where you created your wealth or you want to be in one of those
one or two areas where that is the game you're playing now. You would become really good at that
game. So I think that's important for a lot of families to hear. I know that you have an expertise
also around tax strategies and these structures you've been talking about. So I'm curious if there
are any tax efficient strategies that you've seen commonly used, just what your observations of
how people typically approach things that may or may not be common knowledge at this point.
Right. Yeah. Most people know that if you or your spouse are focusing most of your time on
real estate management, that you can be designated as a real estate professional in the eyes of the IRS.
This allows you to use bonus depreciation in more fluid ways than you could otherwise.
In general, a lot of 1031 exchanges, setting up of trust, a lot of work needs to be done before you
have an exit. If you're saying, well, I'm so busy. I'm so busy.
so focused on my exit, let's just get there.
And then I'll figure out all this lawyer, trust in estate planning, structuring work.
You've missed the vote on probably 80% of what you could have done.
And you're really not doing yourself justice because if you pay 30% taxes instead of 20% overall on a transaction or 30% instead of 10% is equal to saying, okay, well, I just spent the last 30 years building my business.
But you know those last seven years?
I could have been sitting on a beach or playing with my grandchildren or traveling to 80 new countries.
But instead, I wanted to grind for eight more years and not care about structuring things well until after my exit.
That's basically what you're saying.
So you want to be smart about that and get second and third opinions on large transactions and make sure someone's double checking.
Even a large firm may make a mistake.
And if that disqualifies your 1031 deal, I know one group had something not filed properly and missed out on $80 million in tax savings because it wasn't done correctly.
and the insurance policy of that large firm only covers up to $30 million.
So I took a $50 million hit because of a clerical mistake.
And knowing tax things to look out for, like R&D tax credits can be huge for manufacturing
companies, software companies, and that can be a massive tax savings on a deal that someone
may not even be aware of or even ever thought of R&D tax credits.
It's just one example.
The families who are worth more than $30 to $50 million often find.
pretty quickly if they haven't already that they need to really think ahead and proactively
tax plan and use things like qualified opportunity zones to protect against capital gains taxation,
for example. And a lot of families don't want to just be super tax efficient. They also want access to
their capital. And so they may set up trusts and different structures and donor advice funds,
etc. But many of them, like with the qualified opportunity zone, they might say, okay, well,
let's protect 60% of the capital or whatever percentage is right for the,
their situation against capital gain taxation today and put it in qualified opportunity
zone deals.
And let's find the three institutional QOZ funds to put that work into.
And then we'll take the hit on the 40% because it's a long-term capital gain.
And it's not as bad as being taxed on income.
You've provided so many cool insights and a lot of stuff we don't often talk about on
the show, which has been really fun.
I want to make sure before we let you go that you have an opportunity to hand off to the
audience where they can learn more about you, you've like you mentioned,
written 13 books. So definitely hand off to that as well as the investor club, family office club,
all the many things that you're billionaires.com, all the many things you're doing.
Sure. The best way to find out about our events coming up or our membership, if you're running
a company and you want to raise capital or if you're running a fund or syndicating deals,
would be go to family offices.com and you can check out our membership there when our events are
coming up. If you are just getting into raising capital and you want our best book on the topic,
It's free at Capital Raising.com.
Super easy.
Just go there and fill out short form.
If you're an investor and you want to have a 10-minute call with us and come to some of our
events as our guest and see how we could help you set up your family office or just
help you in some way as a private investor with tax feedback, etc.
Or structure feedback, more importantly, just go to investor club.com and just fill out that
30-second form and then Laura Play on our team where I will get in touch with you.
I mean, if anyone needs some quick feedback on something, my email.
is just Richard at InvestorClub.com or you can shoot me a text message at 305-3331-1-55.
Richard, thank you so much again.
I really appreciate it.
And I'd love to come to one of your events coming up.
So I'm going to keep an eye out for that.
Sounds like a lot of fun.
I appreciate it.
And let's do it again.
Great.
Sounds good.
Thank you, Trey.
All right, everybody, that's all we had for you this week.
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