Hot Investor Trends — Ep. 4: Create vs. Preserve: The Two Skill Sets of Generational Wealth

A veteran family office executive shares why the habits that create wealth differ from those that preserve it.

His insight: wealth longevity depends on humility, patience, and disciplined simplicity.

https://familyoffices.com/

Transcript

In this conversation, we look inside how the family offices think. What separates
those who create wealth from those who preserve it for generations? I'm with Whittier
Trust. Bidier Trust began in 1935 as the single family office for the Whittier
family. The Wittiers were one of the developers of Beverly Hills and the Beverly
Hills Hotel. We continue to manage wealth and serve as the family office for the
Whittier family, the sixth generation of the Whittiers. We also serve as a outsourced
family office for other families. Total assets under management,
about $26 billion. And the types of investing, we do. We invest across asset
classes, as you can imagine, invest in traditional stocks and bonds. The simple
stuff, So given the history of the Whittier family, feel very comfortable making
direct real estate investments. We do invest some portion of our capital with outside
managers, so private equity, private debt, venture capital.
But again, for the most part, the bulk of our assets, and that's something that's
been a surprise to me in looking at families who've preserved and grown their wealth
over multiple generations is how simple it can be, not to say that you shouldn't
allocate some of your assets into some interesting and fun opportunities But so many
of the families who've preserved and grown their wealth over generations have just
done it through stocks, bonds real estate In terms of something that's unique that
that we're looking for right now on the real estate side is as many of you know
dollars the Dollars, the prices are a little bit challenging, so we haven't executed
on deals much of late. We used to do three, four deals per year. We only did one
deal last year. We've only done one deal so far this year. But what we are looking
at, historically we did a fair amount of value -ad multifamily investing. We haven't
done that in the last couple of years, but we have seen a couple of interesting
industrial opportunities and sadly I have to say they've all been outside of
California hopefully the environment in California will become a little bit more
business friendly but at the moment we're looking looking outside of California trying
to think of other interesting things that have come across my radar a QR which is
a hedge fund that's been in existence for a long time has had a strong track
record led by dr. cliff assness they have a product at the moment called the flex
SMA so SMA separately managed to count that's a terrific innovative tax product that
will help wealthy families wealthy individuals who have benefited from a significant
capital game to help offset those capital losses, something that might make sense to
dive into you if you're in that position or if you're advising other families in a
similar position. I'm trying to think of some other fun investments that we've been
fortunate to make. We've got a long -term relationship with DFGA's growth fund.
DFGA is very much in the ecosystem with Founders Fund. So we've been fortunate to
make some early investments in companies like Anderil, Palantir, Coinbase,
SpaceX. I feel like everybody's in SpaceX. But, yeah, the Anderil defense ecosystem
is something that is certainly exciting right now and something that's been different
in my lifetime. When I started in this business, defense was not on people's radar
as an innovative fund sector to invest in.
As we're wrapping up, thinking about the million dollar piece of advice,
another thing that I've found very fascinating in my seat and looking through both
people who've generated wealth in their first generation and then also looking at
families that have been able to maintain their wealth over many generations, is that
the skills needed to create wealth are very different and often opposed to the
skills that are needed to preserve wealth over time I'm gonna pause and I'm gonna
say it again because it's something again that really struck me again the the skills
that needed are create to create wealth are often very different and often opposed
to the skills needed to preserve and grow wealth over time So with that I if I
were in a situation I wish I were that I you know had come come to this platform
as somebody who's been a wealth a
patterns have seen hundreds of reps of other families and how to preserve and grow
their wealth over time. So I encourage those folks to come to the table with a
little bit of humility they can learn from others. That's great advice and right on
time. Give a little round applause for a Jeff here. Nice honesty. I love the
candor.
Thanks for staying with us through the series. Up next, you'll hear how private
investors are positioning for 2025 with cash flow and certainty.