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Lessons - How Ultra-Successful People Think About Money | Ronald Diamond - $30B Family Office Advisor · Success Story with Scott Clary

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  In this lessons episode, explore how wealthy individuals approach capital,
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  control, and long-term wealth. Discover how trust and estate planning strategies
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  legally protect assets and reduce taxes, understand why listening and
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  relationship-building outperform short-term thinking, and uncover how patience,
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  generosity, and authenticity create lasting success.
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  Can we teach over some of the wealth transfer strategies that some of these
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  individuals use? I mean, that'd be very valuable. So, if somebody doesn't,
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  you know, doesn't have the advisory of a billion-dollar family office, but I'm
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  sure some of the strategies can still be leveraged. So, when you have money and
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  you're trying to pass it on to your children, your kids, what are the
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  strategies that you can look into and use? Well, when I ran ahead my
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  hedge fund, I remember, I think I was like 31 years old, and I was, you know,
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  is a billionaire's office, and he had a estate planning attorney in the meeting,
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  and he had no idea what it was. The estate planning attorney had no idea what
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  it was talking about from the business, from the, from the financial standpoint.
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  And when the meeting ended, I asked the my perspective client who ultimately
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  became a client, and I'm like, why was he, why was he there? I did it respectfully.
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  And he kind of put his hand on my arm, and he's like, you'll understand one day,
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  he goes, the goal is not to become a billionaire. The goal is to be worth zero,
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  but control as much as you can. And all these trusts in a state planning attorneys,
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  they're just getting stuff outside of people's estates. And that was sort of like an aha moment
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  for me when I realized it. So, what these trusts in a state planning attorneys do,
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  and a lot of the wealthy people, the, the family offices are closer with their trust in a
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  state planning attorneys than they are the financial advisors. Because the goal, again,
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  is not to be a billionaire, it's to be worth as little as possible, but control as much as you can.
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  That's trans, wealth transfer. It's a very tricky issue because you don't want to give the kids
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  too much money, right? So that's a problem unto itself. But you want to bullet proof yourself
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  for litigation. You want to make sure that you have the ability to get things out of your estate,
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  but you still can control it. And that's all these trust, that's all these trusts of state
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  planning is due. And that's really it. So if you, if you start a trust and you start to transfer
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  your assets into that, then you can become like a managing director of that trust. And that does
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  mitigate some tax responsibility, correct? Yeah, a lot. If you look at anybody, any family office,
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  or anybody who's worth a lot of money, they've got a state planning attorney in place,
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  and they've got trust set up and they've got stuff outside of their name. It might be in their
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  children's name, it might be, but they structure where their bullet proof from a litigation standpoint,
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  and they maximize the benefits they could use within the law of what you can do to transfer.
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  Of course, yeah, no, I think that that's the one thing that's very frustrating is that
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  the average person like they they pay such a significant amount of tax and everything they do.
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  And it's it's usually because they don't have access to strategies that can mitigate tax,
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  and that's really it. Like very legal strategies. Look, the tax code's absurdly unfair. I mean,
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  it is what it is. If you look at the people who've made the most private equity hedge funds,
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  I mean, you're paying, you know, you're carried interest. I mean, a lot of that is tax is you're
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  you're benefiting from the tax system. Real estate, you know, 1031 exchanges, you're benefiting from that.
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  So a lot of the people who've made their money has to do, whether it's real estate, private equity,
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  hedge funds, it is utilizing this the tax code and being able to benefit from that.
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  Yeah, no, it's it's just smart to think that outside the box and just speak to people because
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  these strategies are not mutually exclusive to wealthy individuals. That's the thing like they can
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  be used by anyone. And then I guess the other question, is there any other any other I guess before
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  we pivot into like deals that you look at? Is there any other strategies or or tips that you pick up
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  from dealing with these ultra high net worth wealthy individuals that would be just good that could
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  be utilized by somebody who's obviously in a live income bracket? Yeah, I mean, I pick up things
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  every day from from them. And I think the most important thing I think I do is I try to I'm good at
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  it. I'm not great. I'm getting better. Listening is a skill set that people in general aren't really
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  good at. Just listen to people and the people who've done quite well rather than talk so much,
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  just listen to how they did it, what they did, what their strategy was. I think listening to people
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  who've been successful for anybody, what techniques they've used, what strategies you've used,
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  what's their what their MO is. I think the ability to listen is a skill set that most people are
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  not really good at. And they're looking to think about the response to an answer before they
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  actually fully listen to the full question. You notice that that's something that is particularly
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  like a particular skill set that people that are ultra successful, they have that in space,
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  like the ability to actively listen to sort of take a second seat in the conversation to make
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  sure they get 100% of that information. Well, A, you're very good at that. B, my dad told me that
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  he was a banker and he said you could always tell the lawyers and the entrepreneurs because you
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  go to a meeting with 10, 12 people and the lawyers would come in and in general, they would try to
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  show the people that they're the smartest guys in the room, however that is. The entrepreneur,
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  their agenda, they want to find the smartest guy in the room. All I try to do, all I've done
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  is just surrounded myself with people that are smarter than me in various areas that I trust
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  implicitly and delegate. And if you do that, I think it's very hard and not to succeed.
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  I agree. No, that's very smart. Okay. And then last thing that I want to go into just very briefly,
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  you get access to some of these incredible deals. But then you put these deals in front of
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  your network who trust you implicitly to basically make sure that these are good deals. So when
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  you look at some of these deals, what are you looking for? Because that's the lot of responsibility too.
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  Right. But again, they also vet the deals too. Right. So they've got another level of diligence.
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  And a lot of the deals we get might come from the family offices that we work with where they see
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  a deal is just too small for them. Right. So a $20 million deal might be too small for them.
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  They love the deal. They've vetted it. It's a terrific deal risk reward. But it doesn't make
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  sense. It's like an individual investing $50. It doesn't make sense to do the diligence.
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  So a lot of the deals we get are from the large family offices who see really attractive deals
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  it's just too small for them. It's not too small for me. But still, I mean, so that aside,
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  there must be some things that you do look for in deals like some strategies.
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  We do a lot of it is related. I would say most of the families that I work with,
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  it's all a relationship business. And with the right relationships, I think that you'll see
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  people will know who you are and what kind of deals you're looking for. I think that makes a big
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  difference. And I think that people also want to work with people that they like and they want
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  to work with people that they trust. And, you know, there's a person, you know, I'm a big believer in
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  just giving. At the end of the day, I can't tell you how or why, but the more you give, the more you
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  get. It just happens. I can't tell you why rationally. But I know it's true. There was a guy in New
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  York and I'm always introducing people to be other people. And I would say 10 to 15 times a day,
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  I will certainly email, I'd like to provide a mutually beneficial introduction. I don't have
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  an agenda. There's no benefit to me. I just think that this person should know this person
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  because they can each benefit themselves. That's how you have to look at it. Well, when I was in
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  New York, I was at a family office conference and there was a guy who was trying to raise money for
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  early stage venture fund. And we're talking in a tactile party and like, oh, you should talk to
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  this person to one thing led to another. And after he talked to the guy from the venture capital,
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  he said, why did you introduce me to that person? Like, well, what do you mean? He's like, he
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  doesn't invest. And like, I'm not my goal at this party is not just to find people for you to
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  invest it, right? I just thought he was a nice person and you're a good person. It'll be good to
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  me. Now, fast forward, I've never given that person a recommendation. So I think the problem,
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  the issue is we live in a society right now where we want to get and we want to get instantly.
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  And I think as you get a little, and I was much more myopic when I was younger, I think what you
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  realize is the more you give, the more you do get. And I think that's a really important lesson
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  that I've learned a lot from a lot of the family office that I listen to just because I listen to
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  them. I'm curious when you when you deal with people that are just starting out, do you see that
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  one of the biggest detriment is their lack of patience because that's what it seems like that one
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  particular individual, just like the lack of, and actually patience has been a theme through this
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  whole conversation to be honest. It's like what disrupts inpatient capital, it's patient capital,
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  what, what did you do well during your career? Well, you were patient with the relationships you
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  built and you gave and you gave and you gave and you expected nothing in return and then eventually
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  well, again, I was much, I was much more myopic when I was younger so I didn't look at the world
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  through the same lens as you get older, hopefully you evolve and mature and look at the world through
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  a little bit of a different lens. But I just think that you have to be able to look at things
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  from a perspective of, you know, what's going to benefit somebody else. And then if you do that,
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  again, ultimately, it's not a, it's the antithesis of a quid pro quo. It's basically figuring out
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  if I knew somebody who would be great on your podcast, I would go out of my way to introduce you
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  because I think you do a great podcast and I think they'd be a good guest period. I don't,
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  there's, I don't even need to be involved in any capacity, but it's a mutually beneficial
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  introduction. And I think that more and more people need to do that. I think this generation right now,
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  well, there's a lot of problems. First of all, the phone is going to be the smoking of this
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  generation. Number one, two, I think the work ethic in general is not near where it is from my
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  generation. And three, they want to do things quick. And anything good, it just takes a while. It
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  takes time. It takes patience. And when you're 22 years old, it's easy to say it's hard to do. And,
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  you know, so if I had to do, I, when I was talking to David Rubenstein last and a podcast I did with him
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  two weeks ago, and like, if you had a do-over, what would you do differently? And he became,
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  he wanted to law. He became a lawyer first. He's like, I wouldn't have done that. I would,
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  I did this. I wouldn't have done that. We all have do-overs. We would all do things differently,
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  I think. But I think one of the major things that that I get at when I listen to people is, I hate
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  going to conferences and listening to people talk about how great their track record is or how
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  subtly telling you how wonderful they are. I've made a ton of mistakes in my life. And a lot of
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  entrepreneurs and people have made a lot of mistakes. I'd rather talk about the mistakes that I made
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  than the fact that I might have done well in a specific strategy or, you know, grow my business
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  to a certain level. The biggest compliment I ever received at a conference, and I speak at a
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  lot of these conferences all over the world, is that was really authentic. And I didn't take
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  that as a compliment. I just, you know, took the things. But saying that you were authentic,
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  I think that's really important. And I think that a lot of these people look up to people like a
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  David Rubenstein, like authenticity is really, really important. And again, everybody started
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  somewhere and everybody could help somebody in some way. And you have to pay it forward. And I just
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  think if that's a mindset you have, people see through it. And authenticity is really important
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  also because you have to be genuine in what you're doing. And people see through that too. So I
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  just think that, again, the family offices that I've worked with in general, a lot of these people
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  also on the common threads they have, they're very authentic people. Good or bad. They just,
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  they're, they're, they're, you know, what real believe. And they also have a lot of gratitude,
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  which is a huge component of my life. Thanks for tuning in. If you found this valuable,
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  don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode. And if you want to dive
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  deeper into this conversation, check out the links in the description to watch the full episode.
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  See you in the next one.