So He has his own multi -family office and he's based out of Los Angeles, but
helps manage capital for clients globally We've gotten to know each other over the
last couple years I think you first found us over YouTube between your father and
yourself and he works in a wide variety of transactions All over the world really
specializing in growth focus deals some lending and positive cash flow type investment
opportunities. What else would you maybe add about your background or bio?
There's honestly a little bit too much to add because I've worked in so many
different fields from being just a real estate agent to a property manager to a
political consultant and kind of everything between.
I'm not
particularly sure what to add, except for that, I always managed to find myself in
very unique situations and tasked with solving unique problems, which is kind of the
business of a family office, right? That's the day -to -day to solve a problem that
only a high net worth family has. - Got it. When you look to work with someone or
not, what do you care about most? What do you look for
I mean, every, there's, there's so much to look for. But I mean, at the beginning,
just the outset, one, are they good people, right? Are they good people to do
business with? Are you happy? Or do you fit culturally? Because I mean, I mean, you
taught me this yourself, but you, if you get into a great deal, it could be the
best deal in the world, you know, run perfect returns, whatever.
However, if you're with a bad partner and something goes wrong, you will be left
out of the lurch. Whereas if you are in the worst deal in the world and you've
got a wonderful partner, you know you're going to be taken care of when the bad
things come. Right. So, Heal and I were in one deal. Got a little bit of
challenging. We were able to bring in another investor, replace the capital, got out,
skin 100 % intact and then we were able to on with life and you know, no stress
because you're out of the deal. Right? Yeah. Well, I mean, that particular
transaction is the perfect example of this because that when you guys manage to pay
us out, that really sticks with an investor because that's not something an LP would
ever expect when something goes wrong to be paid out, not only paid out, but paid
out with a tiny bit of profit as well. Right. Right. So, when they came back and
said, "Hey, we're finally at the point where we're stabilized and we want to get
rid of our seller financing, we want you to come in as the first lean." And
because of that experience, I was happy to consider it and I ended up being the
lender on that. And we're still in that deal. I think they've got a thing two
months left on their term. Yeah, pretty unique to have a deal go a little bit
unexpected and then be like, okay, I want to be replaced out of this deal, you get
replaced and then you actually come back in the deal later. Yeah. That's great. But
we've heard so much of this event like, oh, it's relationships first. Oh, it's a
judge of character. What's not obvious? What hasn't been said on stage 20 times
already that maybe be counterintuitive or surprising about that?
I don't know about counterintuitive or surprising, but one thing you wouldn't think
of off the bat is to hear the second level or third level strategies or certain
terms that
automatically tell somebody who knows what they're talking about that, hey, you know
what you're talking about too. So if I'm talking to somebody about real estate and
they talk to me about a cost segregation, I already know that you've been around
the block at least once or twice. You've heard this before. Maybe you've done one
of those yourself. Or if I'm talking to you about a 1031 and you tell me about
your experience with an EAT and exchange accommodating title holder. I know that
you've been through that ringer and we can talk on the same level. In fact,
that's something that I intentionally try to do with a lot of people that I meet
is specifically mentioned something that I know that they know that I also know that
they know that I probably don't, right? Right. Got it. I think that Eben Pagan
taught me that if you can explain the problem just as good or better than they do,
that explain their pain point or a solution to it better than they can, then they
kind of instantly have built that rapport that like we speak the same language,
right? Because a lot of the language we speak as investors is pretty specific to
our niche to real estate, et cetera. Can you talk about lending credit investments,
you know, what you like there, what you look to source what you're looking to get
out of events like this, you know, over time in terms of type of deal flow. Well,
I mean, as far as what I look to get out of events like this, it's, I, I, it,
it really only comes after coming to an event like this for, uh, you know, multiple
times, multiple years in a row, say, because, you know, there are many people in
this room that, you know, I've met at previous conferences that, you know, had
approached me with a deal or maybe I had approached them with a deal and that it
got executed or maybe it didn't. We can follow up afterwards. What did you expect
to happen? What happened that you didn't expect? And how did you get out of the
problems that you were in and how at the end of the day, did you perform? Now, as
far as credit goes, I do really like to stay on the safer hard asset side of
things. It was originally meant as a way for me to find high grade fixed income
for my clients that wasn't real estate, but at the very end of the day, it is
real estate. That's what you're talking about because we all love a high cash
flowing business and we can secure debt on that. But there aren't as many of those
as there are hard assets like real estate. And plenty of those need alternative
financing. Nobody wants to work with a bank anymore, believe me. Right, for sure. So
what else do you look for in different niche industries that you like besides real
estate, even if that is 80 % of the focus or even 90 % or there's some other areas
that are personal passion areas like we heard about on the last panel?
I don't know about personal passion areas because right now my my sole objective is
to is to build a balanced portfolio that that solves for my clients immediate issues
and their their medium term issues as well. But I do I do specifically look for
it, especially when we're talking about something VC, like for example, better bath,
better body. We're talking about we're looking at, okay, one,
are they operationally excellent, but Two, do they have a checkpoint in their
industry? Like for example, right? Epsom salt manufacturing. There's only one, two
Epsom salt manufacturers in the entirety of North America. And if you're able to, if
you manage to get in on that, get in on that cut as Jason is trying to do,
you know, that could pay off dividends into your hundreds or two hundreds, you know
what I mean? Right, for sure. Okay, can you talk a little bit about thought
leadership? We talked about this at our workshops related to capital raising in mid
-June. We're going to be talking about this. It's how we first got in touch. We've
worked on, you know, several deals together that your family's invested in. Do you
have any insights or advice for people here in the audience who may work in, you
know, it could be energy, it could be real estate, it could be healthcare, on
thought leadership that attracts investors. Any suggestions on how to do that in
today's world? What works? How to curate themselves as thought leaders in their own
space? Yeah, or like what attracts someone just like you when there's thousands of
AI generated or human written posts going out on LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, etc.
podcast. What do you spend the time to listen to? What is a legitimate large ultra
-wealthy investor actually drawn to right now with all the noise out there? Um, I
like to get more specific, um, you know, the broader, especially with,
with the flood of all this content, the broader that a topic is, the less I'll
learn from the particular video or piece of content. So if they're, if I, I'm not
going to read an article about a basic article about say partnership allocations,
I'm going to read an article specifically about section seven zero Section 704C and,
you know, the specifics around, you know, how a built -in gain works when you
contribute appreciated property to a partnership. - Okay, great. And what about for a
podcast or YouTube content? I've always had this theory that is I've gotten busier
that my most valuable clients are often busy and that probably like a 12 minute
condensed, super focused piece of content on a niche topic versus than a two -hour
interview. But then you see all of these big podcasts, many of the top podcasts do
three -hour interviews, hour -and -a -half interviews, and they seem to blow up and top
the charts on podcasts. And what's your opinion for the family office market based
on the family office friends you have and what you listen to or watch on YouTube?
Is short format better, is long, or does it just depend on who you are as a
person? - It depends on the audience, but it also depends on the topic as well,
because if we're talking about, say, if we're talking about more of a, on the
philosophical side or the cultural side, that's something that short form videos I
think lend themselves really well to. But if we're talking about, you know, say the,
not necessarily a broader subject, but a more complex subject, like how a structure,
legally structure, a for -profit family office. I'm specifically thinking of a about
an hour -long video that Pat Stone Family Office did on this structure.
They were the main advisors to the lender family, who's the lender management versus
IRS case in 2017 is kind of the landmark case for modern family office structuring.
Got it. Okay. And then for those in the audience that want to work with, you know,
next -gen family office investor types, what are some suggestions for navigating that
dynamic?
I mean, it sort of goes to what I was talking about yesterday with code switching
to, you know, know who you're talking to. For example, if I was talking to Sally,
I'd probably say unhoused rather than, rather than homeless. But, you know, if I was
talking to, If I was, you know, someone like you talking to someone like my sister
or, or for example, Lisa, she does this really well. She she found specifically
certain investments that my sister would be particularly interested in based on her
history and interest in Broadway musical theater. Whereas for me,
something that's, that's a little bit more focused towards education that has that
kind of an impact is not as compelling to me. I'm more interested in the numbers,
but with the right, it, you've got to hone in on, on the specific thing that
they're interested in. And that may take a very long time to figure out, which is
exactly why you come to conferences like this multiple times is because you need to,
you need to learn the people. - Sure. It's sometimes challenging to know when you're
working with a ultra -wealthy next -gen or not, obviously. Sometimes I've heard people
say like, "Oh, I met with someone, you know, I thought they had the authority to
invest. I met with them nine times." Turns out they have to get approval from the
father and now they're frustrated. And I think what people don't realize is that
sometimes it might be a 10 million or 5 million or 1 million or half a million
dollar check. And to be frustrated by that is just part of building a relationship
and getting to know a family. What insights or advice do you have on just
navigating that dynamic of family dynamics, winning the trust over the patient's
factors? Anything you want to comment on that?
I suppose don't. I
guess the biggest thing that I can say is to not shy away from extra face time,
especially with, I mean, the next gen members probably this doesn't you know relate
to them as well but you know the the older members of the families they do really
really appreciate you know you sitting down spending time with them right when when
you came to our house I probably would have been very happy to just have a zoom
call with you but but we made it a point my dad made it a point to bring you to
the house so that we could have this discussion you know more deeply and to include
all of our different priorities, often that we hadn't even properly thought of
before, because often with older generations of the family, you know, the question of
why you made money, it's still a stupid question even at the end of the rat race,
because it was always self -evident for them. They needed to provide for their
families. And getting that shift of mindset from,
okay, let's make money to why am I making money or how do I stop trading my time
for money and start trading my money for time?
That's something that you can only really, it's like beating your head against a
brick wall until it knocks down. You won't see really any progress until the very
end. I mean, it's kind of like smoking, right? I think you made this point And in
when we were in Vienna is that 90 % of the damage you don't know that you won't
see the damage of smoking until 90 % of the damage has been done. Right, right,
right. Yeah, a lot of stuff builds up, right? Some critical mass. So interesting. So
speaking of critical mass, when you've been working at formalizing, putting together
your own multifamily office, formalizing your family's kind of family office in an
operation. You've been doing that for several years now. What do you wish you would
have heard in a fireside chat years ago that would help somebody here in the
audience who's grooming their son or daughter or they are the son or daughter about
formalizing their family office?
That's a I would have I would have loved to have heard a lot more discussion on
the nitty -gritty of family governance because it's extremely to get a family to move
from the very ad hoc way that it's used to dealing with things and making decisions
into a fully proper institutional grade committee style form of decision making is a
huge, huge, huge cultural shift. And again, it requires you to really to hear that
maybe 10, 20 times in many different ways for you to properly get your head around
how you're supposed to interact. - Sure, sure, got it. And you've met with people
here at the event who show you their healthcare company, their real estate deal. You
see some of the sponsors speak on stage. What do you think almost everybody not
messes up 'cause it sounds almost like rude or mean, but like, what do you think
almost everyone gets wrong when they are explaining what they do. Because at some
point, yes, you get to know them as a person, but you do ask out. So what do you
do? What does your platform do? Is there anything that you think they should be
doing much differently in presenting to families like yours?
For someone like me, it's a very, it's a very relationship based like going back to
that first question. It's, you know, I can do almost any deal with somebody as long
as I'm, you know, comfortable with them and I understand them on a personal level.
So for example, one of the, one of the, the one of the ones you set me up on
yesterday with, with Bayon, our first, the first 10 minutes of our conversation,
we're entirely about conservation had nothing to do with, with his business or what
was going on. But because that was a particular topic of interest to both of us.
Great, great. Awesome. And it, you know, really helped me connect with him on a
personal level. Yeah, makes sense. And just so people know, for investors that are
participating or if you run an investment club and you're looking for certain types
of deal flow, we want our events to be more productive for you than other random
conferences you can go to in the world. We realize we're not the only investment
conference on any given day even. So we do look through all the bios and if you
tell us what you're looking for, we'll say, "Oh, here's a few people that are doing
exactly that and try to make sure you have a great use of your time here with So
one other thing I'll mention there is is that yes, it's just not on your side, but
also on their side to look up to people that they're they're talking about because
for example, he would not have known that conservation was a particular interest of
mine unless he saw all of the work on on LinkedIn that I had done both in college
and just outside of college regarding conservation and political maneuvering regarding
say carbon dividends and things like that. Right, right. And there's no excuse not
to do that research now because you could be walking to your car and tell GPT or
GROC to do deep research on a certain person of a certain family office and look
at their investment history, public notes on deals they've done, LinkedIn, et cetera.
And that's partially how we feed the AI tool for networking here in the room, is
to take the content from a LinkedIn profile, deep research report, and now we're
adding that to our data products as well. So the deep research is finding those
connections and deals, et cetera. So there's no excuse not to show up prepared
nowadays compared to before, right? What advice would you have for me or anyone in
the room that has, you know, I have a eight, 10, 12 year old girls, you know,
anyone here that has kids, what do you think I should be doing to mentor my
children? What insights would you have related to that so that they're well equipped
when it comes to investing, family dynamics, talking about money or not, et cetera.
- Well, I don't have kids. I still very much am a child myself.
- Me too. - Yeah, I guess we all are at the end of the day.
But one thing I would recommend a lot of people do is well exactly what you've
done. You've set out a very, very clear list of values for your kids.
you'd set out clear incentives with fun, playful goals that enable them to connect
with them and also apply those values in the real world,
in their own lives, in whatever limited way that an eight, 10, 12 -year -old can.
- Right, right, okay. Well, I think it's interesting to hear it from you because
you're a second gen, you're not a kid, but you're not 60 years old either.
And so being in that position, I think you have a unique perspective having gone
through that. So is there anything that you would not do that you think is a
mistake having been second gen yourself? And you're like, Oh, this kind of made me
less motivated knowing this, or this made me feel like I was being controlled by
the family and told what to do with my life or anything like that.
Well, I won't, I won't get into my own family dynamics. That's a whole, That's a
whole mess and a half. But one thing I've recommended my other clients do,
and we've not really had this problem in our family, but I've seen this in a lot
of other families that I don't work with, is that when the youngest generation gets
into philanthropy too early before understanding how wealth is created, they, it
starts to warp their mind to think that, okay, well, the purpose of wealth is be
given away. And, you know, it's, it's wonderful to give away your wealth and, and
to spread it, right? You know, all money is, is a storage of value. And if you
keep it locked up, then you're not providing any value to the rest of the world,
right? But if you, if you, that
I
It's it's their money that they made they get to determine how it how it goes out
And then then you have the other points about you know, it's it's a little bit
Imports their mentality before they understand how to create wealth themselves,
you know How do they know how to spend money in ways that are that are valuable
for other people because they've never created value themselves Great. Awesome. Are
there any of the AI tools we've created that you've been using or had luck putting
to use? I've used doing quite a bit. In fact, it's cut my research time quite a
bit because I mostly use... I'm very uneducated and terrible using AI tools,
but I do use it for a lot of first -order research to set up. For example, in the
past, we've, we've talked about, um, like you've had a large due diligence
questionnaire, for example, with, say a hundred questions, you know, this person
fraud, this person, you know, as you see this person, FINRA, whatever, um, just
having chat, GBG do that for you replaces a hundred, uh, a hundred Google searches,
right? That how much time, how much energy, how much, you know, you, you could
replace an entire employee that way. If your team is set up that way. - Sure,
when you come to an event like this and you're doing more investments yourself, for
yourself, your family and clients, what is a one or two or three, like super skills
you're trying to develop, or you look at other family offices and say, to be the
type of family office we wanna be, that's something that I'm gonna really dig into
and get really strong at as an investor, in case there's someone here in the room
that could help with that. Is there an area or two that you're really focused on
developing over the short term? Over the short term, that's a little bit of a
harder question because we're in a bit of a holding pattern right now as far as
because we're doing a fair amount of estate planning restructuring. But in the medium
to long term, I would 100 % love to expand our toehold in multifamily construction
and development or hotels and hospitality in general. It's something that we've done
very little of and it's something that we've always known that we wanted to get
more into. Okay, great. Any other final thoughts for today? Something that you maybe
wanted to share with the room and didn't get across yet?
I don't know. I mean, it kind of really goes back to finding the right partners,
because even with, say, things that you're not expert in, say that you have zero
expertise in, maybe you can do it yourself, but maybe you can find a good partner
who understands you, who you work with well, who also understands this business that
you can learn from. I very much try to emphasize educational opportunities in the
investments that I go to. I don't want to just be a silent investor. And if I am
a silent investor, I at least want to learn a little bit about what I'm investing
in. I'll have regular calls. I'll do regular site visits even when it's not
necessary because it's important to get
that knowledge right? Because you never know what you don't know, right? So you'll
always make sure that you keep on learning because there are so many learning curves
to jump up at the same time in a family office. If you can find shortcuts,
find the shortcuts, find good people that can help you. I'd like what Tyler had
mentioned yesterday, right? He had hired
a mentor to teach him how to flip multifamily. And, you know, six years later, he
needs God what, 300 million a U .S. on them like that. Right. Right. It's a great
example. We had someone recently come to us who had raised, you know, $400 million.
And he said, Oh, I'd like to educate your investors on, you know, investing in
commercial real estate. We said, Okay, well, I'll be like a sponsorship role, because
we're really featuring investors mostly on stage. And he said, Oh, no, it's not a
pitch. It's just educational. And I said, no, every sponsor is told it should be
educational because the education is the best type of pitch because what we've heard
40 times this whole event, it's about relationships, about trust, it's about
education. So that keeps on coming up as a theme because it's so true. So for
those in their room, it's interesting that the sponsors sometimes are confused and
they pause them and say, wait, I can't even pitch what I came here to pitch as a
sponsor. It's like, well, you can mention what you do and maybe have the last slide
or two about the opportunity. But the more you educate and to show off the deep
expertise, then the more you're actually going to convert people. Even if you didn't
mention what you do at all and you amaze people, they're going to want to be drawn
to your expertise, of course, right? So appreciate all your thoughts there. So he'll
appreciate you being here and doing the fireside chat. And this is not something you
like to do every single day of the week. So I just appreciate you spending the
time. Let's go a big round of applause. Thank you.
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