[ILAB Classic] How to Build Your Own Virtual Family Office feat. Jim Dew

Hello, future billionaires. Welcome back to another episode of the podcast. Today we have a really fun guest. His name is Jim Doo, and he's the founder of Doo Wealth Management. So he's actually a financial advisor and he likes alternative investing. So this is kind of a unique unicorn to find, but he has a really cool approach. His business is really focused on entrepreneurs and helping them build what he calls a virtual family office to help grow and protect their wealth. But he has a lot of great tips, a lot of great things that he shares from working with a lot of ultra-wealthy clients and even some billionaires that he's rubbed shoulders with. And so he shares a lot of things as just what they do, how do they think about wealth, how do they grow wealth, and just a really jam-packed episode with lots of good tidbits. So you definitely want to listen to this. I think you're getting a lot out of it. And as always, if you're enjoying this podcast, we appreciate your feedback. Rate and review on your favorite platform and feel free to share with a friend. Thanks so much. This is the Invest Like a Billionaire podcast where we uncover the alternative investments and strategies that billionaires use to grow wealth. The tools and tactics you'll learn from this podcast will make you a better investor and help you build legacy wealth. Join us as we dive into the world of alternative investments, uncover strategies of the ultra-wealthy, discuss economics, and interview successful investors. Looking for passive investments done for you? With Aspen Funds, we help accredited investors that are looking for higher yields and diversification from the stock market. As a passive investor, we do all the work for you, making sure your money is working hard for you in alternative investments. In fact, our team invests alongside you in every deal, so our interests are aligned. We focus on macro-driven alternative investments, so your portfolio is best positioned for this economic environment. Get started and download your free economic report today. Welcome back to the Invest Like a Billionaire podcast. I am your co-host Ben Fraser, joined by fellow co-host Jim Maffuccio, and we're very excited to have as our guest today Jim Doo of Doo Wealth Management. And I'm really excited for this interview. So we've, we've got to meet Jim, you know, outside of the podcast for a little while and just been really impressed with his business model and just really aligns with a lot of the values and the things we talk about on this podcast, which is teaching people to invest like a billionaire, invest like the ultra-wealthy. And Jim has created a very unique wealth management practice focused on entrepreneurs and helping them build family offices around their businesses. And so, Jim, thanks so much for coming on the show. Super excited to dig into this conversation.

Thanks, Ben. Great to be here. Nice to see you, Jim.

Good to see you.

So let's just start with your story, your background. Obviously, you've been in this wealth management business for a long time, but your model is very unique and who you serve and how you serve them is very unique. And so I think it's, you know, would be really cool to spend some time talking about your journey and your path and kind of how you got to where you are.

Yeah, absolutely. It is an interesting path and how we got to where we are. I was raised by two parents that grew up in the Great Depression. So my parents, their middle name was Frugal. And so I grew up without any nice things. I didn't know kids that had nice things. I went to public schools and through that process I really didn't care much about making money, which is funny that I'm in the money game today. So when I was in college, you might have heard it, they called the, the Harvard of the Southwest, University of Arizona. I don't know if you've heard of that school. Oh yeah. Anyways, I was at U of A and studying mathematics with a minor in physics and went to a counselor because I didn't know what I wanted to do. And the counselor asked me, what are your plans? And I said, well, I don't care about making money. I just want to make a difference. So she, like the obvious choice, she said, you should be a teacher. So I became a public school math teacher, right? I did that for 5 years. Love the kids. I hated the system. There are a lot of issues with public education, so I looked for something else I could do that involved numbers where I could make a difference. So I found financial services. And then 4 years later, I realized that's a broken system too. It's really run by brokerage firms, banks, and insurance companies. So in 1999, I went home to my wife Mimi, who I know for sure, you know, Jim. I went home to my wife Mimi and I complained about how it was a broken system. And she shrugged her shoulders and said, start your own business. And I said, wait a second, I know that you're listening. I said, banks, insurance companies, brokerage firms. She said, I didn't say it'd be easy or how to do it, but that's the only way you're not going to drive yourself crazy. And you have to understand that my wife, her family immigrated from Korea when she was 5 years old. So, you know, immigrants know that the great thing about America is starting a business. And so that's what's her go-to is like, start a business if you don't like the way something's going. So we did. We started our company in 1999, realized that we were entrepreneurs. So we decided we were going to work with entrepreneurs like us. And then along the path, something interesting happened. And that was as I was asking around when I thought I knew everything there was to know about helping entrepreneurs with their wealth. Someone mentioned this thing called a family office, and I had never heard this before at the time. So I started asking around and I heard that, yeah, that's what billionaires do. Billionaires create this family office. And my definition, by the way, is when a billionaire will hire all the needed tax, legal, insurance, and investment professionals, all those attorneys and accountants as full-time employees working for that one billionaire. So by chance, a guy I know really well, he's been a friend of mine now for 25 years, but I went to him and I was talking to him about this thing and he said, well, you know what, a good friend of mine, his grandfather, I think he's a billionaire. I mean, they're extremely wealthy and they might have this family office thing. So he connected me to this guy. We connected and hit it off. You know, we're about the same age. And he said, I tell you what, you're interested in this stuff. I'll introduce you to the CEO of our family office. If you want to fly back to New York and spend time with him, he'll spend time with you. But he said, you know what, it'd be hard to get my grandpa to meet you, but you don't, I don't think you want to meet my grandpa because he's really not involved in the day-to-day anymore. I think you want to understand this family office thing. I said, exactly. That's, that's what I want to do. So I flew to New York. Remember I had breakfast in Manhattan with this CEO of their family office, and at the time I thought he was a really old guy. He was like 60, which today Doesn't seem— yeah, that doesn't seem that old to me today. But at the time I thought, that guy's really old. But we—

what year was this kind of in your practice? Was this early on? Was this a few years ago or—

No, this is probably— I'd have to figure out, but maybe 10 years ago, I'm guessing.

Okay, cool.

At any rate, so we, we hit it off and at the end of this 3.5-hour breakfast, he said, you know, if you want to stay around for a few days, I'll kind of show you what we do and how we do it. I said, I would love to do that. So after spending some time with the family office, I'm on the flight coming home. I've got all these notes and I just remember thinking to myself, gosh, you know, that's not just the best structure for a billionaire. That's really the best structure for any entrepreneur. There's just one problem. You need something like $400 million to build and run one of these things. I mean, that family office in New York, I think they have 47 CPAs just in their tax department. So you can imagine, you know, with these billionaires with properties all over the world and all this kind of stuff, how complicated it can be. But if you just take 40, 70 times what an average CPA might get paid. You can see where these numbers get out of control fast. But, but it's worth it. It's very valuable. And that's why Gates and Bezos and Oprah Winfrey and Sara Blakely, they all have these family office structures. So I remember thinking, well, I would like that. First of all, selfishly for me and Mimi, and we don't have $400 million. So I wonder if we could create a structure to get— call it a virtual family office to get similar results without that crazy expense and cost. And so that's what we set out to do. And we've been refining that over the years. And really our advantage has been when we created this model, Mimi and I would just ask ourselves, okay, we're entrepreneurs, we know a lot about wealth management, how would we build it for ourselves? And so the magic to making it affordable, really, and I'll give you kind of the secret that we came up with, is every entrepreneur over their lifetime picks up an attorney, an accountant, an insurance agent, a banker. They get all these professionals. And if you picture a wheel, those are like spokes on that wheel. But usually we call that the financial— financially, the financial flat tire, because usually those professionals are not all A-players. They're usually not collaborating and talking to each other on a regular basis and no one's holding them accountable. And the worst part is the entrepreneur is in the hub right in the middle of that circle, managing that team. And, you know, sometimes tongue in cheek, I like to ask audiences, I like to say, who's the annoying one in your family? And if you don't right away know who that is, guess what? It's you. And it actually is. In my case, in Jim's case, it actually is Jim, you know, but, but if you don't know who that is, that's you. And if you don't know who's in the wheel in the middle of that wheel, it's you. And my question is, should it really be you? Do you have the expertise, the time, the commitment to really stay on top of this and also to hold all these professionals accountable? So What we do is we vet their team. We keep everyone who's good, we'll keep them all if they're all good, and then we get them to collaborate. We hold them accountable. In essence, we put ourselves in the middle of that wheel. So then the entrepreneur can be the visionary that sets the direction but doesn't have to be in the minutia of getting all those things done and coordinating the professionals. So that's the magic of how we were able to do it for an affordable price. And then things we've answered over the years, you know, we said to ourselves, okay, well, if we were on the other side of the table, we wouldn't want a firm that's building a virtual family office for us. We wouldn't want them getting commissions or selling insurance or selling products. We want them to help us to make sure that if we need those products, they're being designed properly, commissions are being disclosed and negotiated, like all those things are being done with us, but that they're not benefiting if we buy insurance or don't buy insurance. Also, we didn't want to work with a firm where they're trying to gather our assets because the model is probably most prevalent for wealth management firms is they want to gather the assets. They charge you 1% fee for managing the portfolio. But the problem with that model, and there's a lot of very smart, good people who run that model, is there's a conflict of interest. Because if we have a client that says, hey, should I pay off my building or should I give you the million dollars for the AUM model, right, the asset center management model, that's a conflict. And that conflict's going to play out whenever you have conflicts of interest in that way. So we said, hey, we're not going to be a firm that's trying to gather the assets. We're not going to be a firm that gets paid not only commissions but referral fees, kickbacks, revenue sharing. A lot of wealth management firms get paid if they bring a private equity deal to the client, they get a spiff. If they bring a tax strategy to the client, they get a spiff. If they bring in oil and gas, right, to the client, they get a spiff. And we want to make sure that we are only looking for the best deals and the best opportunities for our clients based on what they need, and that we're not getting paid by anyone except directly by the entrepreneur. So I know I'm kind of rambling, but this is a passion of mine, and that's kind of my start from schoolteacher to, to where we are today.

So in a sense, you don't, you don't have a horse in the race, but you own the racetrack. I mean, you're, you're kind of, you're kind of managing the track to make sure all the horses are running together in a sense. And so I just have a question for you. So you, you step into an existing organization that has all of the, you know, this, this flat tire because, you know, you have all these, all the various spokes, these, these professionals that are helping the person in the hub supposedly. How frequently or maybe this is a, you know, loaded question, but what would you say just high level, the percentage of times where you end up, let's say within the first year, replacing some of those spokes or all of those spokes? Is it, is it pretty common that you're actually able to herd these cats and get them all collaborating and working together, or do you end up having to convince the hub that they need to— they need a new attorney, new account, new insurance agent?

It's case by case. So I'd say in most cases we don't keep all the professionals a year later. There's one or two that we find that can be replaced with better, better professionals that serve that entrepreneur better. I'd say it's rare when we keep them all and it's rare when we get rid of them all. It's usually 1 to 3 that we have to replace, I would say. And then ongoing entrepreneurs outgrow their professionals and often either because of loyalty or because they just don't realize it, they outgrow. So the, the CPA or accountant that helped them go from startup to $1 million of revenue may not be the CPA that can take them from $1 million revenue to 30 or 40 or 50. So sometimes they outgrow— same thing with attorneys. Some attorneys can handle certain entity structures, and then when you get too complex, you need a whole new level of legal expertise to help you as you grow. So there's those reasons to replace professionals. It's not always because they're not great, but there's a lot of, a lot of professionals that don't do great work or aren't responsive or aren't easy to work with. And it really could be any one of those things. And sometimes we have kind of that heart to heart with the professional where we say, hey, your work is great, you're an amazing attorney. But when we ask you for something, you agree to get it to us and 2 weeks later we don't have it. We ask again, 2 weeks later we don't have it. That doesn't work for us. And there are plenty of good attorneys that would take your seat. So we just need to know, are our expectations unreasonable? And if they're not, how do we get you to deliver what we expect? And if you can't do it, just let us know and we'll look for a different partner for our profession, for our—

that leads me to the next question, that are you, are you curating or just vetting or both these, these professionals when it's, when it's obvious that one of these spokes needs to be replaced?

How does that work? Yeah, it's a great question and it really is situation dependent. So we will vet professionals that the entrepreneurs bring us. So if they say, hey, I just talked to someone today, I need to replace my account, And this is someone who's right now, it's— they're not a client yet. They're just starting the process. But they told me right away in this introductory call, I know I need to replace my account. My accountant can't do the work that I need my accountant to work to do. So that person might say, hey, I've got a suggestion from another friend of mine who's in a similar situation. Yeah, let's throw that name in the hat. Maybe we know that professional. And then we're also going to go out and say, hey, let's bring a couple that we've worked with in the past and had good results with entrepreneurs. So it's both sides. And then we've curated over time a list of what we feel are the best professionals in different areas. And we actually have ratings of how we rank them. And we also have specifics about when they're good, when they're not so good, what states maybe they're good in, if it's a state-specific problem. And we're—

to me, that represents huge value. And you're saying— and you don't get referral fees for bringing these people on board. So there's there's perfect alignment there.

Yeah, we never take any fees from any professional. If there's an opportunity where they normally pay a wealth manager a fee, when we find that out, we just say, okay, credit that to the client however you can, uh, because we won't take it. But since you're used to paying it, we still want the client to benefit from that and not have you just make extra profit off of our clients. So that's kind of how we roll with that. And yeah, we're constantly looking for new professionals. Now I think we have clients in 40 states. We have advisors in 13 states. So we're getting a pretty broad reach as far as our network. And then the other thing is, once you know an amazing professional in one area, like let's say there's just an incredible attorney in— I'll try to pick somewhere— in Des Moines, and you say, hey, we need a different kind of attorney in Des Moines for Iowa. We go to that attorney. That attorney probably knows other good professionals, and then we take them through a vetting process. Which is very detailed about how we evaluate a professional that we haven't worked with before and then try to see if it's a good fit. But a lot of times we can plug and play with professionals that we've had experience with in the past. If not, we have our vetting process and we're also open to meeting more. And as I said, if they say, hey, here's a professional I heard is amazing, great, we'll put them through our process and interview them and see if they might be a good fit for you.

Perfect. Yeah. Some of the things you said I think are really important to kind of emphasize because I think so many individuals, entrepreneurs especially, they're building businesses and, you know, they're having success. And as they're kind of, you know, filling in the gaps of where they need help on the personal side, they're generally going through relationships, right? Or who do I know or who do I get a referral from? And you kind of hodgepodge, you know, bolting on these relationships that maybe over time you outgrow. And like we kind of had a situation, there was an accountant we had for a long period of time with some of our funds that we were running. And, you know, known him for 30-plus years, right? Amazing, you know, guy and all this kind of stuff. But we started noticing just they weren't getting what we needed done and our funds kept growing and they couldn't service the needs. And it's really difficult to kind of pull that plug and to, you know, to switch. But even aside from that, it's probably even harder to evaluate, are they actually hitting the benchmarks that they should be hitting at this level? Right. Because entrepreneurs are experts at their businesses. They're not experts at evaluating what are the benchmarks for, you know, a good CPA or benchmarks for a good trust attorney, you know. And so being able to have some objectivity around some of those things and realize, am I getting the best, you know, fit for where I'm at? You know, that's a whole other side of it as you keep, keep growing.

Well said, Ben. And just to give you— I'll just give you 5 quick things. If you're evaluating a professional, I'll just give you 5 Areas you should look at. So the first is the regulatory websites. Often I see people skip this step or they, they don't do it. They Google somebody, right? And, and I know an advisor, a financial advisor who got in trouble with his state and his state banned him from— canceled his license, revoked his license. So what did he do? He moved to another state and he set up shop there and then he paid a very smart— what would you call it? Google search person. What do they call that? Word or whatever. Yeah, yeah, to bury him on like page 12 or something where nobody goes to page 12. So if you went to the regulatory website, you would see everything, but most people would Google a person like this, and page 1, page 2, page 3— no one goes to page 3 or 4. I mean, let alone 5. You as an author—

so it's reversa. It's not search engine optimization, it's the optimization.

That's exactly right. Yeah, it's like How can you make me invisible so that someone have to go through 12 pages to find me? You know? So, yeah, so he did that. He set up a shop and everything else. So the first thing is regulatory websites. So State Board of Accountancy, if you're an accountant, the bar association in your state, your insurance department, your state insurance department for an insurance agent. So going to those different areas, the regulatory websites is the first thing to see if there's complaint history, to see what the records are.

Those—

that's really important. Second, I would say education and credentials. You know, what's their, their history as far as education credentials? Third would be their specialization, because most entrepreneurs usually need more specialists than generalists. And a lot of times we'll have entrepreneurs that have their attorney who does their corporate work, also do their estate plan. And in my experience, you need specialists in both those areas. They're very niche. It's like going to a doctor who says, oh, you have a brain tumor? Well, yeah, I know all about that. Plus I deliver babies and I mend broken arms in my spare time, right? You go, I'm not— I'm not going to that doctor. So specialty is really important. Experience— how long have they been doing what they're doing is also another key attribute. And then finally, personality and follow-through. And follow-through starts from the very moment you connect with that firm. So if they're not at their front desk or through their intake, they're not responsive. Don't expect they're going to be better when you become a client. And then personality. I like to tell entrepreneurs, don't make the mistake of having everyone on your team, people that you like and people that you would have over for a barbecue because you want to have some healthy tension in your team. Now, you don't want to have someone on the team where you say, I can never understand what this person's saying. I feel like I can never communicate with this. That's, that's a bad personality. But if it's just like this person isn't really like me, This is the person because you don't want to have a bunch of people like you surrounding you. You want to have people who think differently, who slow things down, who pump the brakes if you're always on the accelerator. And then all those professionals, we talk about a healthy balance between risk and opportunity. Sometimes you might have to push the CPA away from risk and toward opportunity. Sometimes you might have to push an insurance agent. You know, they could go either direction, but you want to make sure that you're balancing that risk. In a way that fits your personality and what you're comfortable with.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I'd like to shift a little bit because I think what's so unique about you, aside from everything you just said, which is obviously very unique in your model with just, you know, more of a, you know, by-hour or retainer-based model versus an AUM model, is also your approach to the investing side of things. So, you know, obviously on our podcast, we focus a lot on the investing side. And a lot of advisors that we've worked with, they kind of fall into two camps. It seems like some that understand alternatives understand there's a place for them. Alternatives being private equity, real estate, venture capital, and then some that just have more of a, I'd say, a cookie-cutter model where it's just, hey, it's 60/40, 70/30 stock bonds, some, some, you know, low-cost ETFs. And we'll put you into one of our models, you know, aggressive, conservative or whatever. So You've, you know, been exposed and have done a lot of work in the alternative space, which I think is very unique because it is more work. It is, you know, more difficult to evaluate. And but also overlaying the, you know, the individual's risk profile, their appetite. And so talk about how your perspective on alternatives, when do they make sense? How do they fit in a portfolio? You know, and obviously there's a certain probably net worth spectrum, right? As you increase your net worth, you know, as we've studied the ultra-wealthy, you know, there's generally bigger allocations into these, these types of investments. Right. So talk a little bit about your perspective on that. When does it make sense and those kind of things?

Yeah, it's— yeah, it's an important area to talk about. And I agree, there's kind of one faction of wealth managers that just feel like you throw your money in a 60/40 stock bond mix and you're done. And then others will dabble more in alternatives. And often or at times those philosophies are driven out of how they are paid and how they make money. I don't want to say that's always the case, but the truth is, as your wealth grows, you need different investments to have true diversification as well as to get all the opportunities that are out there. And as you grow your wealth, you also have access to more opportunities. You know, when you're not an accredited events investor versus when you are, that opens up a whole different universe of opportunities. And, and risks as well, because as you said, they're harder to evaluate than an ETF or a mutual fund, but they also have different opportunities that you don't get in ETFs and mutual funds. As your wealth grows, I think it's important to expand the universe of opportunities that you're going to look at, and then also to have a guiding structure or strategy to look at these different investments through. And what I mean by that is the billionaires, what they do very, very good job at is their asset allocation. So they say, how much should we have in real estate? How much should we have in venture capital? How much should we have in art or collectibles? And they have that pretty well thought out because that's what drives their decision-making. Because if not, what I see from a lot of entrepreneurs we work with is they're just flying around to whatever great idea they hear. And often it's whoever their buddy is like, oh, their buddy brings them an idea. So then they go, oh yeah, that seems really interesting. I'll throw money at this startup or this VC deal or this real estate deal or this oil and gas deal. And there's not a really good thought process about where, where should my money be overall as a strategy and how much should alternatives be in that overall game plan? Because for example, if you're in real estate, and I remember just in the last few years I've met some entrepreneurs that said, Jim, I have real estate. That's all I love. And I love multifamily. It's the best place to have your money. Okay, that's interesting. But you have to decide, are you trying to get rich or stay rich? Because if you're trying to dramatically grow your money, being concentrated actually can be an advantage. Concentrated in a business, concentrated in fewer assets or investments. However, there's also more risk if that one thing goes wrong. And some of these entrepreneurs that I know, I've talked to recently, and now they're struggling because cap rates have changed. They can't do cash-out refis. They're having trouble with variable rate loans. And so now multifamily isn't doing as well today as it was a couple of years ago, and that's fine. But what I'm saying is if you're investing to stay wealthy and you say, how much am I going to have in real estate? But then within real estate, how much should be multifamily? How much should be single-family homes? How much should be self-storage or RV parks? You know, slicing that up in smaller pieces so that you can know, because then if you say, hey, I don't have any self-storage, and I like self-storage, then you're going to start looking for self-storage. And the stuff you look for, it's no different than, you know, when you've never had an orange car and you buy an orange car and then you start seeing all these orange cars. They've also been there, but now you're focused on that. So all of a sudden you're focused like, hey, I'm going to look for a self-storage deal. And of course, you need to know what makes one self-storage deal better than another. And the same thing with oil and gas. And oil and gas has some tremendous tax benefits that are built right into the code. And can have great income streams. So those kinds of things start to boil up to the surface. But having an overall game plan and knowing where and when and how they fit in, and then how are you going to make the decisions? Because often traditional financial advisors are not going to have a lot of knowledge on oil and gas, and yet you need to make good decisions. So that's why, you know, I applaud what you guys are doing out there, creating an avenue for alternatives and for oil and gas that often, you know, people don't have or some of the programs that we see, you know, have a lot of expensive fees and, and not great people who are running the program, you know. And so we can talk about, you know, how do you evaluate alternatives and other investments like that?

Well, I love what you're saying, too, because so much of it is about what's your strategy, right?

What do you—

what's your goal? What are you trying to accomplish? And I think this is a little nugget that I just love. I heard you say this before, but to dramatically grow wealth, concentration can be a benefit, right? It can be a big amplifier, but also amplifies your risk massively. So if you're early stages of your wealth building, you know, first generation, you're trying to, you know, become accredited, you probably want to concentrate a little bit. Maybe you want to start a business, maybe you want to, you know, go all in on one thing to try and hit it big, and you can withstand some of those additional potential risks and losses. But if you're trying to preserve, you got to diversify, right? And it's, it's, you know, age, uh, old idiom of just diversification, you know, is pretty key. How do you see this kind of transition shift over time to, you know, certain levels of wealth when investors kind of start thinking differently about it?

Clearly, the more wealth you have, the more diversification you need to stay wealthy and the more you need things like alternatives or should at least consider them. If you're an office manager and you have your 401, you really— I don't think you need to venture outside of traditional stocks and bonds. But as your wealth gets more substantial, then you're missing opportunities by not taking a look at this. And, you know, one thing that I see when it comes to diversification that people, investors make mistakes is— and this has been a mantra out there sometimes out in the world— is only invest in what you completely understand. And if you're going to be diversified, there's no way you can invest in only the stuff that you completely understand. And I can tell you, when I look at a billionaire allocation, there's no way that that billionaire knows about all those different areas. However, they know it's important to spread the money around and they have people they trust who know those areas that they work with. But you as the investor cannot know all these things.

They learn as the lowest on the totem pole. The lowest investment is, you know, getting your stockbroker— stockbroker puts you in stock. Well, how much do you really understand about stocks, sir? How much do you understand about price earnings ratios and what actually drives the value? So it's almost a defeated, you know, thesis from day one is only invest. I would say if you're growing wealth and you're actively involved, you know, like we got started in the distressed debt world and we were very concentrated. And I looked across the spectrum of opportunities that were everywhere within the residential real estate world. And we found what I believe was the sweetest place to stick the fork in and concentrate. But you know what, 10 years later now, that's, that's a We're having a difficult time finding product, so we've moved into this other model where we're partnering with other people that have expertise that are concentrating and growing well. We're growing right alongside of them and bringing our investors along for the ride. And it's just, it's been, you know, it really validates exactly what you're saying there. So anyway, yeah.

Now I have all your, if you're all in like a business, someone starts a business and all their wealth is in that business, you better know that business inside and out. So when you're concentrated, you have to know everything that's going on. But when you're diversified, you can't. That doesn't mean you don't want to be wise, and it doesn't mean you don't want to have trusted advisors who know those areas who can help you, because you definitely don't want to just blindly say, well, I'm not going to understand this stuff, so I'll just throw money left and right. You do want people on your team, people who you can trust, people who understand these different investments. But the analogy I give is if you ask me how all the aerodynamics of how a plane flies, I'm not going to be able to explain that to you, but that doesn't limit me from getting the use of it out of an airplane. I have trust in the pilots. I have trust in the maintenance people who are taking care of the engines. I can see the track record of how safe US anyway, domestic commercial jet travel is. And I don't limit myself and say I'm only going to travel if I completely understand how that mode of transportation works. and then I would never travel because how am I going to use it?

I would never be able to flip the light switch on in my office and come to work.

Right, right. So I think being open to learning those areas and investing when you're not 100%— I know this backwards and forwards how it works, but enough confidence where you know what to look for in a deal to make sure it makes sense and you understand how it fits into your overall portfolio.

Yeah, I think go back to the strategy and the, you know, what's the primary aim or goal in as you're kind of shifting to more of this diversification process, right? You concentrate. Now you want to kind of shift your approach. And what I've found, I've talked about on the podcast before, is a lot of people have just a sock drawer of investments, right? They have a friend that sent them a deal. Oh, that looks kind of cool. Invest in that one. Or this one looks cool. I'll invest in that one. And eventually they kind of look back and again, 20K ones. I don't remember what this deal is. And there's no kind of singular rationale behind it. And maybe you all of a sudden you've got huge concentration risks in this particular market, this particular asset class that you weren't even aware of. Right. So I think it's, it's important to have, to have an overarching driving goal. And one thing you've said before is compelling focus. And I love this, this concept. You talk about what you mean by compelling focus is kind of a driver for, for your vision of growing wealth.

It's one thing that billionaires do a really good job of. It's like having a compelling focus. And all of us, we have to push a lot in life. You have to grind, you have to work hard. I still don't know any magic way not to do that to be successful. But you need something also that pulls you forward, because if we're constantly pushing and grinding, it gets exhausting and people can burn out. But if you have a compelling focus that pulls you forward, then that becomes something that, that makes life much easier. And then it also gives you better outcomes in the long, in the long term. So a story I like to tell is, is about my mom. So my mom passed away. A few years ago, but she was a really important person in my life, extremely loving and caring and supportive. And I remember when I was a schoolteacher making $20,000 a year, I said to my wife, Mimi, I said, one day I'm going to do something for my mom. One day I'm going to support her in a way that, that matters. And that vision, even though it wasn't that detailed— and I love it if you get a compelling vision that's even more detailed— but that vision pulled me forward through a lot of times when I struggled or I was I was trying to figure things out. And then fast forward, my mom was in her 80s and my wife Mimi and I were over at her townhome one day and I noticed the toilets weren't clean, the floor wasn't clean, and my mom always kept an immaculate house. And it just struck me that my mom was no longer physically able to do the work around the house. So I sat with Mimi and said, hey, why don't we just hire a cleaning service to come in every 2 weeks? She said, yeah, no problem. So I went and sat my mom down. I said, Mom, we're going to hire a cleaning service for you to come in. And she cried. My mom was not a crier. She was so moved that she cried. And it was one of the, one of my happiest moments of what I was able to do for my mom. And then every 2 weeks she would call me. I'd pick up the phone. Hi, Mom. And she would say, it's Christmas today. I go, what are you talking about? And she's like, the cleaning people are here. So that was that little thing that financially wasn't a big deal to us, was such a big deal to my mom. But I had that focus that one day I wanted to give back to my mom. And the more specific you can make it, the more powerful. But that, that compelling focus to pull you forward through all those times, that's what makes it easier, and it also makes the journey more worthwhile.

I love that. Could you give some other examples? I feel like you have so much, um, life you just assume, hey, I'm going to be happier once I get to this number, right? If I could just, just to get to this number, this income, or this net worth, and I'm going to be— everything will be that, you know, great, and I'll be figuring everything out. But so much of the time that the bar just keeps moving, right? It's just always the next, the next thing. And, you know, what have you seen? What are some of your favorite maybe compelling focuses or visions that you've seen from the ultra wealthy that you've worked with? Because eventually at a certain point, hitting a certain number, it's not going to move the needle for you anymore. You've already kind of living the lifestyle you're living. You can only take so much with you, you know, to the grave, right? And That's under the air. So, you know, what are some of the things you've seen that have been stuck out to you? I'd love to hear some, some ideas or thoughts.

I'll give you a few. I'll give you one in process and I'll give you a couple of flavor of a couple of things. So one is a current client of ours whose the charity that they're most concerned about is child trafficking. And they have their compelling focus is when these kids get saved out of child trafficking, what happens next, because they have this, this trauma that they have to deal with that could last years going forward to try to figure out, you know, how do they live a normal life after being subjected to that? So their compelling focus is they want to create a ranch for these kids. Once they save these kids, somewhere to go, be around other kids who've had similar stories so that they can heal and do things, activities, and learn and grow. In an environment where they don't get just thrown back into normal society after what they've been through. So that's their compelling focus. So very powerful. I believe they're going to get there, but that's much more motivational to them than, hey, I want a Lamborghini and I want a third house. And, you know, all those kinds of things are nice. And I'm not saying not to put that on your vision board or have those goals because they can drive you forward. But you'll find out if you're not there yet, when you get there, you're going to be excited the first day you have your Lamborghini and then a couple of years later it's not going to have that same feeling. And especially when you get your insurance bill or when it breaks down, you're going to realize why it may not be that, that much fun after all. But my point is, that's a compelling focus. Another one that I actually saw come to fruition is a client of mine who's big into a children's charity. And I'll try to be as vague as possible because he did this. His, his goal was to do this anonymously. And, you know, a lot of people give anonymously— anonymously, I'll put in quotes— because they really want people to find out. In fact, I was at an event one time where they said, and the anonymous donor of this was— and I thought, I don't think they— I think they need a dictionary to understand the word anonymous. So nobody knows this except the executive director of the charity and me, who was working with the client. But he had this focus that he wanted to do great things for this children's charity. And it turns out they fell on financial hard times, the charity did, and they needed a reset. And so he financially single-handedly funded this charity for the next 20 years with one check. And this is going to serve— the charity serves about 500 kids a year who are kids in very low socio, socioeconomic areas, high-risk kids. Makes a tremendous difference in the lives of these children. So think of the ripple effect. So serving 500 kids a year, those kids are going to have kids, those kids' kids are going to have kids. And the most amazing thing about it was this was such a pull for him and his spouse. I mean, it just— it moved them so much that this was always on their radar. But when it happened and I sat down with them and this is kind of an interesting thing, I told him how much I admired what he was doing. And the fact he didn't want people to know about it. And I was just praising him and giving him as much accolade as I could give him. And he said to me— and he was— this guy is not dishonest. And he also doesn't— he doesn't embrace false humility. Humility. He said, you know, Jim, it's really not that big a deal. I said, what do you mean it's not that big a deal? And he said, well, here's what I'm saying. I know what you mean, and it's going to make this huge difference in the world. But here's why it's not that big a deal. I've become to a point of my success where doing this, I didn't have to give less to my kids. I didn't have to take a different vacation. I didn't have to sell a house. My life changes not one single bit because I've gotten to a point where I can achieve that vision and that goal and that compelling focus comes true. But as I think about it, it's not that big a sacrifice. And I thought, wow, that's really interesting. But I can tell you that even though he doesn't feel it's a sacrifice, They talk about that charity every time I see them. They know the contribution that they've made and nobody knows but me. So I'm like the only one other than the executive director that they can talk to about it because nobody still knows that this went down. So there's, there's another one. And then the other one is a family where they wanted to create what I would call a dynasty, which is wealth that goes on more than 5 generations. And they really took a lot of time creating these trust documents an incentive trust, though a kid has to earn a dollar to get a dollar out of a trust. Things like the kid wants to start a business, they have to go to a committee, they have to submit a marketing and a business plan. If the kid wants to change careers or do something different, buy a house, like there's all these provisions for how they get money and it's all built on education, success, working and philanthropy. So there's also a component where when they take a dollar out of the trust, they got to give a dollar somewhere. So they have thought in great detail about that. So that's been a compelling focus that they're not going to be on this planet and they'll be somewhere else in a better place, but they're not going to be here when that comes to fruition. But that's a compelling focus that has pulled them forward for years to know that their great-great-great-grandchildren are going to be benefiting not just from money, but with the way they're going to benefit from the money and the way it's being procured and, and controlled and managed on their behalf.

So I'd like to touch on a point that will dovetail nicely with what you just said, because you've just, you've just painted some pictures of some people that had some, you know, relatively, relatively large vision and driving compelling vision that, you know, as you say, pulls them forward. And, you know, for one, I mean, people that don't have wealth, uh, and there's kind of a— can be a poverty mentality that, well, that person gave away, you know, $1 billion, but that was no real sacrifice to them because it didn't move the needle in their life. First of all, it's just a foul ball to even go there. But it's— what you don't realize is that person, the sacrifice they made was the discipline of building a business that could generate that kind of, you know, I mean, people typically that have gotten to that point have taken some significant risks in their life. You know, I've been, I've been washed out twice significantly and started over again when I was 55 years old. So Yeah, now, now we're coming into some, some wealth and, you know, having these kind of conversations is meaningful. And then that moves me to what I really wanted to say was for people that are out there, for our audience, that, you know, you're, you're not, you know, nobody's where they want to be wealth-wise, maybe. But the mistake that most of us make is, is looking for or engaging like the kinds of things that you're coordinating, Jim, First of all, I was going to say outfits like yours, I don't know that they exist, but, but the different spokes, they go like, I went looking for these different spokes just, you know, a couple of years ago. I'm way behind the curve. And so I tend to come from my very limited knowledge base or my peers who are pretty much where I'm at on the wealth curve. And I think one of the, one of the— in speaking with you personally prior to this podcast, one of the real values that, that you bring that I really want people to hear is because you are connected to these people that are further down the trail than almost anybody that would come to you. Right. So you're looking at, you know, they may be thinking, well, here's the level of CPI I need right now. Well, you know what? You really don't have to pay any more to get the CPA that Jim's firm knows that's dealing with multibillionaires as well as somebody you know, where you're at. So it's kind of like the old adage, like you become the average of the 5 people you hang around. Well, you're only going to get the level of professional service based on your existing network or the— your knowledge base. And so tapping into like your organization, you're dealing with way bigger fish than I am. So, you know, I have access to those people, you know, if I choose to go that way or if you recommend that, you know, for a client to go that way. So I think that's huge as we tend to be more reactive in life rather than proactive. And, you know, I'm going through the metamorphosis myself to be more looking down the road, even multigenerationally. And it does— it changes the way you make decisions and it changes the way you do your hiring and, and, you know, the consultants that you work with.

I'd like to make one comment on the compelling focus and You know, some of the examples I gave are, you know, very wealthy people. But as I said, my compelling focus was helping my mom and it wasn't millions of dollars. It was just paying for a cleaning service every 2 weeks. So I just encourage, if you're listening to this, it doesn't have to be a compelling focus that has some huge grand thing that they're going to cut ribbons and stuff like that. It can be— it could be this, it could be your time. It could be I'm going to get to a point with my investments so that I can take Fridays off and only work 4 days a week. And on that Friday, I'm going to go do I'm going to volunteer work or charity work and help others, or I'm going to spend time with my grandchildren or whatever. It can be a compelling focus that doesn't involve money or doesn't involve a lot of money. It's just one that moves you and pulls you forward. And then on the other comment that you mentioned, Jim, when it comes to building these virtual family offices, once you're making more than $1 million of personal income between EBITDA, if you have a company, and personal salary, if you're paying yourself from your business, you should be able to outsource and have someone build that for you. And before then, you have to be something we call the air traffic controller. And this is sometimes not very much fun, but this paying attention to the different professionals, this is spending time to evaluate and make sure that they are coordinating their efforts and that they are doing a good job. And that's kind of step one, because I always say that most entrepreneurs I meet, they're either ostriches or jugglers. Ostriches who just say, hey, I'll just worry about it later. I'm focused on my business and my family. Jugglers who have all the balls in the air and they're dropping things left and right. Moving from that next to the air traffic controller where you do have excellent professionals, you're the one in charge of running that team. And then ultimately you have a firm run that team for you. That's kind of the progression that I see for entrepreneurs going from, you know, ostrich or juggler all the way up to virtual family office structure.

Yeah, the problem is being an air traffic controller, like being a mediocre air traffic controller isn't a really good thing. Because I've had a few crashes and some people, where'd that guy go? He's off the radar. So yeah, that's a pretty, that's a pretty wise way of putting it, Jim. It definitely would drive people to get through that stage pretty quickly.

Yeah, it's true. Yeah, it's true. And I know a few air traffic controllers that are very good at it. Two of them are former tax attorneys that became business owners and they love it. They spend all their time doing it. And they're really into, you know, running their team of professionals. But in my experience, most entrepreneur business owners would rather increase the time they spend with their family, take more vacations, make more money, build their business faster. All those things make sense.

Well, Jim, this has been really, really fun. Thank you so much for coming on and sharing some of these, some of these thoughts. And what's the best way for folks to kind of get a hold of you or kind of learn more about what you guys do? If this is kind of interesting to them, our website's probably the easiest way.

It's dewalth.com, so D-E-W-W-E-A-L-T-H.com, and see what we're doing there. And there's also a way to see if you qualify to, to have a conversation with us.

Okay, perfect. Can you share just some of the bare minimum things that you're looking for just so people know if it makes sense or not?

Yeah.

Owner-founder entrepreneurs who have $1 million profit from their business, or you could say EBITDA plus salary if they're an S corp paying themselves. Kind of that million take-home and above for owner-founder entrepreneurs. That's where our work starts.

Starts to make sense. Okay, awesome. Well, thanks again so much. This has been really, really fun and hopefully I'm sure our listeners got a lot of, a lot of good stuff out of this. So appreciate you coming on.