← Success Story with Scott D. Clary
Success Story with Scott D. Clary
Lessons - How Ultra-Successful People Think About Money | Ronald Diamond - $30B Family Office Advisor
00:13:46
Loading summary
Transcript17 lines
- [00:00]
A
LinkedIn ads is a Success Story Partner. Now I get served the worst ads like I'm a 35 year old guy running a podcast and a business and I'm seeing ads for retirement communities and cat food and I don't have a cat. Someone paid for that impression and it was completely wasted on me. So when you want to reach the right professionals, use LinkedIn ads. Over a billion professionals, 130 million decision makers you can target by job title, seniority, industry, company size, you're actually reaching the people who can say yes. LinkedIn ads delivers the highest B2B return on ad spend of any major ad network. Not just some of them, all of them. So here's the deal. Spend $250 on your first campaign and get a $250 credit on your next campaign. Just go to LinkedIn.com success. That's LinkedIn.com success. Terms and conditions apply. Elay is a success Story partner. Now are you spinning your wheels on low value tasks? Do you spend more time putting out fires and planning your long term goals? And as your business grew, you brought on more people and booked more meetings. But focus became even harder to find. Here's the truth. Business leaders shouldn't lose hours to emails, scheduling, project tracking and avoidable interruptions. Just because it all has to get done doesn't mean it needs to be done by you. That's where our friends at Belay can help. Belay's US based Remote Executive Assistants don't just take work off your plate. They learn how you operate, what slows you down and where things tend to go sideways. Then they get ahead of it. So if you're looking for a practical tool to help you start leading with clearer purpose, download Belay CEO Tricia Shortino's free resource the 40 Hour CEO Work Week Planning Guide. Just text the word Scott to 55123 for your free copy today. That is S C O T T to 55123 to start accomplishing more while juggling less with Belay in this lessons episode, explore how wealthy individuals approach capital control and long term wealth. Discover how trust and estate planning strategies legally protect assets and reduce taxes. Understand why listening and relationship building outperform short term thinking and uncover how patience, generosity and authenticity create lasting success. Can we teach over some of the wealth transfer strategies that some of these individuals use? I think that'd be very valuable. So if somebody doesn't, you know, doesn't have the advisory of a billion dollar family office, but I'm sure some of the strategies can still Be leveraged. So when you have money and you're trying to pass it on to your children, your kids, what are the strategies that you can look into and use?
- [02:44]
B
Well, when I ran ahead, my hedge fund, I remember, I think I was like 31 years old, and I was in a. It was a billionaire's office. And he had an estate planning attorney in the meeting, and he had no idea what he was. The estate planning attorney had no idea what he was talking about from the. From the business, from the. From the finance standpoint. And when the meeting ended, I asked the. My prospective client, who ultimately became a client, I'm like, why was he. Why was he there? I did it respectfully. And he kind of put his hand on my arm and he's like, you'll understand one day. He goes, the goal is not to become a billionaire. The goal is to be worth zero, but control as much as you can. And all these trusts and estate planning attorneys, they're just getting stuff outside of people's estates. And that was sort of like an aha moment for me when I realized it. So what these trust and estate planning attorneys do, and a lot of the wealthy people, the family offices, are closer with their trust and estate planning attorneys than they are their financial advisors. Because the goal, again, is not to be a billionaire. It's to be worth as little as possible, but control as much as you can. That's wealth transfer. It's a very tricky issue because you don't want to give the kids too much money, right. So that's a problem unto itself. But you want to bulletproof yourself for litigation. You want to make sure that you have the ability to get things out of your estate, but you still can control it. And that's all these trusts. That's all these trusts and estate plannings do.
- [04:13]
A
And that's really it. So if you. If you start a trust and you start to transfer your assets into that, then you can become like a managing director of that trust. And that does mitigate some tax responsibility, correct?
- [04:24]
B
Yeah, a lot. If you look at anybody, any family office or anybody who's worth, you know, a lot of money, they've got an estate planning attorney in place, and they've got trust set up, and they've got stuff outside of their name. It might be in their children's name, it might be. But they. They structure it where they're bulletproof from a litigation standpoint, and they maximize the benefits they could. They could use within the law of what. What you can do to transfer.
- [04:50]
A
Of course, yeah. No, I think that that's the one thing that's very frustrating is that the average person like they, they pay such a significant amount of tax in everything they do. And it's, it's usually because they don't have access to strategies that can mitigate tax. And that's really it, like very legal strategies.
- [05:07]
B
It. Look, the tax code's absurdly unfair. I mean, it is what it is. If you look at the people who've made the most in private equity, hedge funds, I mean, you're paying, you know, your carried interest. I mean a lot of that is tax, is. You're, you're benefiting from the tax system. Real estate, you know, 1031 exchanges, you're benefiting from that. So a lot of the people who've made their money has to do, whether it's real estate, private equity, hedge funds, it is utilizing this, the tax code and being able to benefit from that.
- [05:43]
A
Yeah, no, it's, it's just smart to think that outside the box and just speak to people because these strategies are not mutually exclusive to wealthy individuals. That's the thing. Like they can be used by anyone. And then I guess the other question, is there any other, any other, I guess before we pivot into like deals that you look at, is there any other strategies or tips that you pick up from dealing with these ultra high net worth wealthy individuals that would be just good, that could be utilized by somebody who's obviously in a, in a lower income bracket?
- [06:13]
B
Yeah, I mean, I pick up things every day from them. And I think the most important thing I think I do is I try to, I'm, I'm good at it. I'm not great. I'm getting better. Listening is a skill set that people in general aren't really good at. Just listen to people and the people who've done quite well, rather than talk so much, just listen to how they did it, what they did, what their strategy was. I think listening to people who've been successful for anybody, what techniques they've used, what strategies you've used, what their MO is, I think the ability to listen is a skill set that most people are not really good at and they're looking to think about the response to an answer before they actually fully listen to the full question.
- [07:03]
A
Do you notice that that's something that is particularly like a particular skill set that people that are ultra successful, they have that in spades, like the ability to actively listen, to sort of take a second seat in the conversation to make sure they get 100% of that information.
- [07:20]
B
Well, a, you're very good at that. B, my dad told me that he was a banker, and he said you could always tell the lawyers and the entrepreneurs, because you go to a meeting with 10, 12 people, and the lawyers would come in, and in general, they would try to show the people that they're the smartest guys in the room. However, that is the entrepreneur, their agenda. They want to find the smartest guy in the room. All I try to do, all I've done is just surrounded myself with people that are smarter than me in various areas that I trust implicitly and delegate. And if you do that, I think it's very hard not to succeed.
- [08:02]
A
Agreed. That's very smart. Okay. And then last thing that I want to go into, just very briefly, you get access to some of these incredible deals, but then you put these deals in front of your network who trust you implicitly to basically make sure that these are good deals. So when you look at some of these deals, what are you looking for? Because that's a lot of responsibility, too.
- [08:26]
B
Right. But again, they also vet the deals, too. Right. So they've got another level of diligence. And a lot of the deals we get might come from the family offices that we work with. Where they see a deal, it's just too small for them. Right. So a $20 million deal might be too small for them. They. They love the deal. They vetted it. It's a terrific deal. Risk reward, but it doesn't make sen. An individual investing $50 doesn't make sense to do the diligence. So a lot of the deals we get are from the large family offices who see really attractive deals. It's just too small for them. It's not too small for me.
- [09:01]
A
But still, I mean, so that. That aside, there must be some things that you do look for in deals, like some strategies we.
- [09:08]
B
We do. A lot of it is related. I would say most of the families that I work with, it's all a relationship business. And with the right relationships, I think that you'll see people will know who you are and what kind of deals you're looking for. I think that makes a big difference. And I think that people also want to work with people that they like, and they want to work with people that they trust. And, you know, there's. There was a person. You know, I'm a big believer in just giving. At the end of the day, I can't tell you how or why, but the more you give, the more you get. It just happens. I Can't tell you why rationally, but I know it's true. There was a guy in New York, and I'm always introducing people to other people. And I would say 10 to 15 times a day, I will start an email. I'd like to provide a mutually beneficial introduction. I don't have an agenda. There's no benefit to me. I just think that this person should know this person because they can each benefit themselves. That's how you have to look at it. Well, when I was in New York, I was at a family office conference, and there was a guy who was trying to raise money for Early Stage Venture Fund. And we're talking at a cocktail party. I'm like, oh, you should talk to this person. Just one thing led to another. And after he talked to the guy from the venture capital, he's like, why did you introduce me to that person? Like, what do you mean? He's like, he doesn't invest in. My goal at this party is not just to find people for you to invest in. Right. I just thought he was a nice person, and you're a good person. It would be good to meet. Now, fast forward. I've never given that person a recommendation. So I think the. The problem, the issue is we live in a society right now where we want to get and we want to get instantly. And I think as you get a little. And I was much more myopic when I was younger. I think what you realize is the more you give, the more you do get. And I think that's a really important lesson that I've learned a lot from a lot of the family offices I listen to just because I listen to them.
- [11:25]
A
I'm curious, when you. When you deal with people that are just starting out, do you see that one of the biggest detriments is their lack of patience? Because that's what it seems like that one particular individual. It's just like the lack of. And actually, patience has been a theme through this whole conversation, to be honest. It's like, what disrupts inpatient capital? It's patient capital. What did you do well during your career? Well, you were patient with the relationships you built, and you gave and you gave and you gave, and you expected nothing in return. And then eventually.
- [11:54]
B
Well, again, I was much more myopic when I was younger, so I didn't look at the world through the same lens, through. As you get older, hopefully you evolve and mature and look at the world through a little bit of a different lens. But I just think that you have to be Able to look at things from a perspective of what's going to benefit somebody else. And then if you do that again, ultimately it's the antithesis of a quid pro quo. It's basically figuring out, if I knew somebody who would be great on your podcast, I would go out of my way to introduce you because I think you do a great podcast and. And I think they'd be a good guest, period. I don't even need to be involved in any capacity, but it's a mutually beneficial introduction, and I think that more and more people need to do that. I think this generation right now, well, there's a lot of problems. First of all, the phone is going to be the smoking of this generation. Number one. Two, I think the work ethic in general is not near where it is from my generation. And three, they want to do things quick. And anything good, it just takes a while. It takes time, it takes patience. And when you're 22 years old, it's easy to say, it's hard to do. And, you know, so if I had to do, I. When I was talking to David Rubenstein last on a podcast I did with him two weeks ago, and like, if you had a do over, what would you do differently? And he went into law, he became a lawyer first. He's like, I wouldn't have done that. I did this, I wouldn't have done that. We all have do overs. We would all do things differently, I think. But I think one of the major things that I get out when I listen to people is I hate going to conferences and listening to people talk about how great their track record is or how subtly telling you how wonderful they are. I've made a ton of mistakes in my life, and a lot of entrepreneurs and people have made a lot of mistakes. I'd rather talk about the mistakes that I made than the fact that I might have done well in a specific strategy or, you know, grow my business to a certain level. The biggest compliment I ever received at a conference, and I speak at a lot of these conferences all over the world, is that was really authentic. And I didn't take that as a compliment. I just, you know, took the thanks. But saying that you were authentic, I think that's really important. And I think that a lot of these people look up to people like a David Rubenstein. Like, authenticity is really, really important. And again, everybody started somewhere and everybody could help somebody in some way, and you have to pay it forward. And I just think if that's a mindset, you have people see through it. And authenticity is really important also because you have to be genuine in what you're doing and people see through that too. So I just think that again, the family offices that I've worked with in general, a lot of these people, some of the common threads they have, they're very authentic people, good or bad. It just, they're, they're, they're, you know, what they believe. And they also have a lot of gratitude, which is a huge component of my life.
- [15:20]
A
Thanks for tuning in. If you found this valuable, don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode. And if you want to dive deeper into this conversation, check out the links in the description to watch the full episode. See you in the next one. WIX is a Success Story partner Now when I started Success Story, I was doing everything myself. I was building the website, I was editing episodes, I was figuring out tech that I had really no business figuring out. But if I was starting today, I'd use wix. Here's the thing. Wix is not some basic drag and drop situation. You can build legit professional grade websites in minutes. Their AI website builder asks you a few questions and it generates a custom site ready to go. Or if you're more hands on, They've got over 2,000 templates and an editor that lets you customize literally any detail. What I really like is the AI tools built specifically for entrepreneurs. Unlimited image generation, automated email marketing, SEO help. The stuff that used to eat up your entire week. And it's all backed by enterprise grade security with 99.99% uptime. So your site doesn't go down when it matters most. 280 million businesses run on Wix. If you've been putting off building your site, this is your sign. Sign up for free@wix.com that's wix.com Framer is a success Story partner. Now you could be a solopreneur, you could be an entrepreneur. You could be somebody just sitting at home who's trying to start a business out of their house. But you know the drill. You need good design to create a website to get your business off the ground. But good design is expensive and you can't afford to hire a designer for every single landing page. Social posts. But you also can't afford to look amateur. And I've been there. You need to move fast. You need to look professional. But you also need to not blow your budget on five different tools. Framer already built the fastest way to publish beautiful production ready websites. And it's now redefining how we design for the web with the recent launch of Design Pages, a free canvas based design tool, Framer is more than a site builder. It's a true all in one design platform. From social assets to to campaign visuals to vectors and icons, all the way to a live site, Framer is where ideas go live, start to finish. And the best part is it's actually free. Not a trial free. I'm talking unlimited projects, real vector tools, 3D transformations, everything you need without the nickel and diming. So if you're ready to design, iterate, and publish all in one tool, start creating for free@framer.com design and make sure you use Code Success Story for a free month of framer pro. That's framer.com design and use promo code success story framer.com design promo code success Story Rules and restrictions may apply.