Barron's: Lessons from an Entrepreneur on When to Build a Family Office and How to Protect Your Wealth

Before I transition from my recent piece in The Atlantic to my latest article in Barron’s on wealth transition and family offices, I want to sincerely thank all of you. The response to the Atlantic essay was overwhelming in the best possible way. I received hundreds of thoughtful comments, messages, and conversations from readers who engaged deeply with the ideas I explored, and I’m genuinely grateful for that.

READ BARRON'S ARTICLE HERE

I also want to acknowledge that this next piece is written for a much narrower segment of my audience. Conversations around investing, wealth creation, family offices, and generational capital planning are not topics everyone spends time thinking about. But for readers who are interested in how wealth is built, preserved, transferred, and stewarded across generations, I believe these conversations are becoming increasingly important. The fundamental insight about which I am quite excited is that returns earned by entrepreneurs follow a “power law” while returns that investors earn follow a bell curve. More or less. Most entrepreneurs either lose their investment or generate relatively modest returns, while a very small number create extraordinary wealth. Investing, done reasonably well, might be a lot less glamorous but a lot more predictable.

I think these distinctions have important implications not only for entrepreneurs but also for anyone guiding their family through wealth preservation, investing, inherited capital, and risk. If those issues are of interest to you, I hope you will find the article worthwhile.