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Joel Nagel on Building Success and Protecting Wealth

Summary

Richard C. Wilson hosts a fireside chat with Joel Nagel about building a business, earning client trust and planning for wealth across generations. Nagel describes how he differentiated his legal practice by focusing on saving and protecting wealth, drawing on his legal background to serve clients, and building relationships through patient, personal conversations. He discusses how entrepreneurs can stay focused on a core direction while developing a team and pursuing opportunities that fit their strengths. The conversation also covers transparent, lawful asset protection and the value of planning before problems arise. Nagel explains how structures can support long-term stewardship. He shares lessons from a teak plantation investment and reflects on preparing children to understand the advantages they have received while finding their own paths. This discussion can help founders, investors and family office families consider trust and succession, along with governance and long-term planning. Legal and tax questions call for advice from qualified professionals who understand the family's circumstances.

Key Moments

Long-term wealth planning works best when you start before a problem appears. In this fireside chat, I spoke with Joel Nagel about how entrepreneurs build trust, protect what they have created, and prepare family members for the responsibilities that come with wealth. His perspective is useful for founders and family offices because it connects business growth with stewardship over generations.

Build Trust Through Service and Focus

Nagel described a career shaped by a clear focus. While many investment conference speakers discuss making money, he chose to talk about saving and protecting wealth, preserving it for the future, and passing it on. He drew on his legal background to serve clients and said trust grows when people feel comfortable bringing you into their affairs. For a family office, this is a practical reminder that relationships develop through steady work and a clear purpose.

He also stressed the value of asking questions before offering advice. A family's needs depend on its circumstances, business interests and goals for the next generation. A founder considering a family office may need to think through those questions before choosing a structure. Our guide to questions to answer before forming a family office offers a starting point for that discussion.

For founders, focus matters as much as service. Nagel recalled resisting the urge to accept every kind of legal work while building his practice. He stayed with the area where he wanted to build expertise, then used spare time to write and speak about it. He described growth as gradual, supported by a team and sustained attention. Family offices can apply the same discipline when deciding which businesses or investments fit their purpose.

Plan While Conditions Are Calm

A central theme was the timing of asset protection planning. Nagel explained that moving assets after a claim or dispute has begun can raise serious legal concerns. His approach was to plan while conditions are calm, with structures and reporting handled openly and within the law. That is a conversation to have with qualified legal and tax professionals who understand the family's facts.

He described transparent documentation as part of responsible planning. In his view, a lawful structure should be explainable and supported by the required filings. That point matters to family offices that hold operating businesses, investments or assets across jurisdictions. The purpose of planning is to make responsibilities clear and preserve family intent, not to obscure ownership or avoid legal obligations.

Family offices considering how direct holdings fit into a broader portfolio can review our guide to why family offices prefer direct investments. The right approach depends on family goals and available resources, along with its governance arrangements. It should be assessed with appropriate professional advice.

Think in Generations, Not Deadlines

Nagel's account of a teak plantation showed how a long time horizon can change the way an opportunity looks. He described land that was poorly suited to one use but had potential for growing trees. The investment depended on patience and a willingness to wait. The lesson for founders and investors is to understand what an asset can become over time, while being clear about the risks and work involved.

He also discussed trust structures as a way to document the grantor's wishes and guide future trustees. In the conversation, he described using a written statement of intent to explain how family values should inform decisions. Governance deserves the same attention as structure. Families can set expectations, clarify responsibilities and help future generations understand why decisions were made. Our resource on single family office governance covers related questions.

Preparing the next generation also means balancing support with independence. Nagel spoke about helping his children access education and opportunities, while expecting them to build their own lives and contribute. He described working with family members as personally meaningful, while recognizing that each child may follow a different path. Families can make these expectations part of ongoing conversations, leaving a transfer of wealth with less to resolve.

Make Stewardship Part of the Plan

For family offices, founders and investors, the chat connects enterprise with stewardship over generations. Build trust by understanding people and serving them well. Keep focus on the work you are equipped to do. Plan early, document decisions, and involve qualified professionals where legal or tax details matter. Then give the next generation enough context to understand both the opportunities and responsibilities attached to family wealth.

Full Transcript

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0:02 we're going now have a fireside chat this one of our C millionaire fireside chats with Joel Mel so uh you do not want to miss this and related to Mark's topic about writing books I've put out 13 books and people sometimes say why would you want to write another book well each time we do and provide more value it helps our business grow so that's why we want to do it um but we like doing these fireside chats we try to do at least one of these uh at every event sometimes two or three it kind of mixes the day so it's not a whole bunch of panels and standalones only and today we have with us Joel Nagel and sometimes people people have these long bios and when I start a podcast sometimes people read off my whole bio and it's almost an embarrassment because it takes so long for them to read it off I feel like I I should have shortened it but there are some bullet points I want to share with Joel uh about Joel that I think add context to this and I think are are really important to note um too many for me to have memorized so I I jotted down a couple of them even though I know Joel pretty well now and know his family so besides being a leading international uh asset protection expert he's done work in 43 countries over 34 years he's never had a federal agency or a US Corporation Court penetrate one of the offshore trusts so if you want to have a nest EG that is predicted offshore good person to know um Mike

1:20 Cobin him founded ECI real estate development in 1996 that was about when I was getting that internship to make websites for that Indian fellow I mentioned earlier uh he's been at this quite some time uh they own 4,000 acres in Central America $130 million of real estate Assets in 2003 he founded the an International Bank in bise he's a chairman and founder of that bank they just had their 20e anniversary when I was speaking at one of his events recently they're announcing that he's he's served on 30 different boards to understand his influence he has residencies in Pennsylvania in Biz where he's been a diplomat of bise not many people have Diplomat passports and in the history of the world there's only been a very finite number of diplomats that have ever lived and I know Joel will probably tell us that number in just a minute he mentioned it on stage recently um but I find that really fascinating there's probably not another Diplomat here in the room um and above everything else like I said earlier we're just trying to find really great people who can share great things with the audience and uh Joel's a real example of that so we're honored to have him here with us today and I think you'll enjoy this fireside chat if we get done early enough we'll take a quick question or two but otherwise I'm sure he'll be gracious enough to to answer questions afterwards and this evening Etc so why don't we jump into it and

2:38 anything I missed anything you want to correct me on do you know the number of diplomats quite the introduction I I would just retort by saying that I speak at conferences all over the world and no one puts on a better conference than you do Richard so let's let's give Richard a round of applause thank you appreciate that Joel uh and and how many diplomats total has there been do you still have that number top of mind yeah I I think since the time of Jesus it's about 40,000 so 40,000 yeah 7 billion people in the world now great well so what's your what's your secret to success you're obviously a Serial entrepreneur who has done things at a greater sale and scale and success level than most people in your field well to me first of all I always wanted to try to be different than everybody around me um you know we're at an investment conference I speak at a lot of investment conferences and everybody's trying to tell you how to make money so you know I show up at investment conferences and tell people how to save and protect preserve and pass on what they already have so you know I try to make myself a little bit different um I've also really leveraged over the years my my legal background first to serve people right I mean at the end of the day you know it's a profession so you're serving people um and the the more comfortable they feel with you the more they want to bring you into their into their into their sphere that's how I ended up on 30 different

3:54 you know corporate boards had the opportunity to co-invest um you know one of the first things I got involved with was a uh Investment Bank almost 30 years ago and you know I had I there were a lot of very wealthy people on this in this bank and I helped set it up and I helped operate it and uh you know the minimum investment size was I don't know for any particular investment was a half million or a million dollars and um I said hey I'd really like to you know co-invest with you guys but you know I don't have that much money and they said well how much money do you have and I said well this one thing you're investing in I'd really like to participate well how much money do you have and I said well I think I could scratch together $10,000 and uh the one guy said oh he he he just had his first kid let him let him do it let him do it well you know a couple years later my investment in that bank was worth $4 million so you know being in the room with the right people you know they're going to bend over backwards for you if if if they feel that you're bending over backwards for them so for me you know when I represent a client you know that that's you know you know my universe the sun rises and sets around that client I want to do everything possible assuming what they're doing is legal moral ethical and I you know I'm at the stage of my career where I I don't take clients that don't meet that basic criteria but assuming

5:13 they do then you know I I give everything I can to help them achieve their goals and objectives and usually it does come back around awesome so there's probably a thousand words of wisdom there but one word was making people comfortable the word comfortable and I think that you know you don't come off as a hardcore Wall Street sales man that's going to eat someone's children for breakfast we've had no conversations where there was awkwardness or stress or pressure or something strange about it and sometimes the investment industry people are very intense and so obviously that's played into your success can you talk about that are you just naturally pretty relaxed and that's the type of character you are and youve just done well and that's how you naturally are or how much of that have you learned to emphasize or be even more slow paced so people trust you and they don't feel rushed or something yeah I mean look when I'm involved in in like my own businesses I'm sure some of my my employees would say I'm not that easygoing and relaxed but you know first of all you take the client way you find them and you're always trying to improve where they are you're trying to help them uh you're trying to get them to the next level um in many cases their businesses themselves are very successful and they don't need me uh for their success but now they start thinking about you know generational wealth stewardship how am I going to you know protect and preserve and pass on uh my wealth to my kids my grandkids and yeah that that that really should be

6:30 slowed down a little bit like there's no rush I think I mean frequently we will get calls on December 29th and someone will say hey can we get this all done by the 31st um you know we'll we'll run around like chickens with our heads cut off if we need to but but that's not normally the way you want to do you want to take your time relax get to know people get to understand you know in Latin America they say measured twice cut once that's what we really want to do when we start with a with a new client we really start by just asking them a million questions about themselves because I I'm not really qualified to give you advice on anything if I don't understand your situation first so you know and I think that shows through the clients understand that we we really do want to know and and understand their situation and and that's what creates the connection in the first place awesome yeah I think you do have to ask a lot of questions to customize something that makes sense whether you're an attorney or someone designing an investment solution and our private investor Playbook has 40 questions you should ask yourself or ask a client before you create a family office for them along that same line but we often have the Fireside chass with people that I'm trying to be more like like Paul carer managing 8.5 billion at 45 years old Jeff Hoffman a billionaire is going to do the fireside chat at our next Summit and then you're here there's other people here in the room that that would like to be like you when they grow up as well and part of our business is running an investor Club but we want to

7:48 evolve and have that turn into an equivalent of you founding a bank 20 years ago or the real estate development firm 23 years ago Etc uh more than 23 years ago so what advice do you have on having one thing that's successful and then timing and finding the natural path of maybe having one or two offshoots that turn into Major offshoots versus a side experiment or something that's just truly passive any lessons you've learned the hard way over 30 plus years doing that sure I mean not everything we've ever done has worked out for sure but you know one building a team I'm I'm the first to say you know I I I can't take credit for anything everything you know involves the team our bank for example we just received an award for the best bank in in car which is all of the Caribbean region I mean you know it took us 20 years to to to earn that uh award uh you know it's there's no overnight um you know magic fairy dust that's going to get you there I I would say you know whatever your primary objective is you have to like Focus uh without any distraction Interruption you know as a young lawyer one of the things that happened to me a lot you know you're you're trying to get your practice up and off the ground you're trying to um make ends meet you have rent to pay you have a you know a wife you have little kids at home and you have this natural tendency to take any piece of business that that comes along and I really you

9:08 know I really resisted that I I knew the lane I wanted to be in I focused on that um when I had extra time I wrote articles contacted conferences and said hey do you need a speaker to come and talk about asset protection and you know that's how I used my extra time and you know over time it it really paid off I mean it's like a snowball it just keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger and you know was telling Richard the other day one of my friends told me you know you have an amazing law practice because you have an unlimited marketing budget that you don't have to pay for it's called you know how screwed up the US is and basically more than half the people are always upset all the time and um you know once you're upset you're worried about things you're thinking about um maybe making investment overseas maybe picking up a passport somewhere or a resident somewhere you start thinking about these things and then it's not that hard to you know to find me and my number and and so the phones really do ring all day I can tell you I have a secretary she literally does nothing but answer the phone all day and I'm always kind of amazed and perplexed like where where do all these people come from sure well it's obviously working um I know when we had our Cent Millionaire strategies event in Vienna the summer uh you know had a member of the Habsburg family which if you're not familiar uh the person who came and spoke would be like the prince or would be the the the reigning member of the family for the whole country if that still existed

10:25 there we also went and got to my daughter got to flip the coin on TV coin toss for the Vikings football game which she loved and so you're obviously very influential and tied into a lot of people but when you meet somebody who's worth $30 million or $100 million plus how do you really start that relationship and and earn it do you do you treat them different do you treat every single client the same is there a go-to strategy or two that just really works we haven't already talked about related to getting people comfortable I mean I think one of the earlier speaker said something about oh you know billionaire walks in the room and he's the the funniest uh person the most intelligent person I had an extremely wealthy Uncle he was short fat and bald and he used to say you know the more money he had the the taller he got the more handsome he got and the more hair he had on his head so you know that's sort of a natural inclination on the one hand um you know I I I I would say I resist that um my overriding tendency is to just try to treat everyone as a as a client and and that means getting to know them you know as on a personal level to the extent that they'll let let me you know in um some people don't some people maintain a you know a wall of facade around them they just want you to have certain bits of information you know the more information we have the better the better job we can do for people and I think they they understand

11:42 that so they tend to you know maybe let us in more than they would a salesperson investment advisor you know um people do understand that they have something called attorney client privilege with their lawyer so you know they they'll they'll even end up telling us things that we probably don't want to know um they'll tell us things that they probably wouldn't tell their spouse or you know their priest or or whatever but um yeah I mean I think it's developing that inter interpersonal relationship and then that goes a long way you know everywhere else sure yeah uh Joel is so humble and lowkey about all the success he's had that it wasn't until meeting with him for the second or third time that I realized when he mentioned like this bank or the real estate company it was like something he fully owned and it was this this big thing that he had developed and it's kind of the opposite approach that some people take on presting themselves so what about closing a client does it naturally in your industry just come in and and they have this impetus to get going and they have this deadline or do you use a certain approach and say well based on everything we said do you want to do you want to sign do you want to get started this week do you do you have a closing approach or it just happen so naturally don't even think about it well we don't we don't we don't have a closing approach in the sense of um you know like like a traditional sales cycle um we we try to help we try to educate you know speak at conferences write articles

13:01 usually um people kind of know when they come to us sometimes they're not in a hurry like hey let you know we can drag out six months a year this is something I want to do it's generational other times it's like oh my gosh I'm I'm worried that you know I might be getting sued and like I need to get something set up you know yesterday so we we in that regard we're more reactive we're not we're not really proactive we have enough people knocking on the door that we don't there's never a need like oh gosh we need three new clients this month just doesn't work like that sure sure makes sense so in a second I'm going to ask you to let the audience know what what like the number one or two or top three facts about global asset protection are but I've heard Joel speak four or five times on the topic uh there's one thing that always got my attention uh is that he said in the olden days 20 years ago people thought about global asset protection as hideand-seek and now it's showand tell if someone comes and looks you say this is what we have here's a structure it's all above board feel free to audit it 10 times over if you want everything was done open book uh and it's not let me hide my Assets in Panama or let me hide it here then I pay zero taxes you know uh Joel always says you know I don't want to see you wearing orange one day and I won't work with you if you request me to do something that's going to maybe put you in that position it also comes back on him and uh that really that

14:18 really uh stood out to me so um what do you think is most I guess important to communicate to the crowd about global asset protection well frequently we'll talk to somebody and you know they'll have idea or suggestion that does cross the line and I'll say well look if if you want to violate the law you don't need me you don't need a lawyer to break the law you need a lawyer to help you you know stay within the law um I had a journalist call me up when the Panama papers broke and they were like oh are you worried on behalf of your clients I said no absolutely not and you know it's because you know for every transaction we do for clients uh you know we do the proper legal reporting uh if we set up a trust there's a you know a filing that goes along with that there's a gift tax return uh there's a return that goes along with setting up a foreign corporation and sometimes you know the the pendulum swings too far the other way I've had clients say well I wanted to do this but my lawyer my CPA said it was illegal like what's illegal oh they said setting up a offshore company was illegal I'm like wow well there's like 15 different forms I have to fill out for the IRS when I set up a company for you overseas I mean it would be unlikely that they would have all this paperwork if it was you know illegal do in the first place so the main thing is just you know I think what you said show and tell it it it is actually the showand tell attitude that intimidates would be

15:37 plaintiffs it intimidates you know government um you know agencies I can tell you the first year of my practice this was uh back in like 1990 um we we we did some work for a client and then all of a sudden we got a a letter from uh US District Attorney uh us Assistant Attorney excuse me asking for information about a client well that totally freaked me out right because you have ATT turning client uh privilege and I you know really didn't know what to do there was a mentor program through the the bar association and I called this lawyer he was this like 85y old uh raspy uh uh New York Jewish lawyer the whole accent and everything and and I explained the situation he said ah let me tell you here's what you're going to do and and basically what he said is he said call the US attorney back and you say look I want to I'm more than happy to cooperate with you you know we're we're very much open book but you know obviously we have a turning client uh relationship turning client privilege but if you go to you know the court and get ask the judge to get a subpoena then um you know I'll gladly honor any subpoena I'm not going to fight The subpoena get a subpoena I'll turn over the documents well they recognize the fact that no judge is going to you know allow a government agency to just you

16:55 know Waltz into a law firm and take their records so they back down and went away and a few other times in my career it popped back up again I used the exact same strategy and and so I've never turned over information I've never you know had a government agency tenacious enough to try to fight through that attorney client privilege you know clients sometimes will say to me hey is this what what what if the NSA is listening to our call I'm like what what if they are I mean you know they they Eaves dropped on the chancel of Germany I mean you know I can't stop him from EAS dropping on me but you know it's uh there's some Supreme Court rulings one's called the fruit of the poison tree means if they you know if a government agency does something like that that's illegal then it can't be used you know against you in any kind of process or proceeding so you know that's really the attitude we take do things the right way the legal way uh the transparent way and and that's really what's going to give you the protection going forward awesome yeah one example Joel told at one of the events was that um let's say you back over somebody's million dooll you know show dog uh and kill the dog and someone tries to have an action against you in your assets are in a trust and beliefs or whatnot uh their action would be potentially against you not the trust and bise they could fly down to B and try to file local documents against the trust and they would say what did the

18:11 trust do did the trust run over your dog no uh so correct me if I'm wrong but that's one example of like how some of this works right like very simplified yeah I mean I mean that that's a very good example I mean when you create a trust or a foundation in a place like lonstein Nas you know B uh Islands these types of jurisdictions you know these are not neutral jurisdictions we all agree the US is a pro plaintive jurisdiction we're we're the most propan of jurisdiction in the world and then people say well are you trying to find like equilibrium are we are you trying to find a a neutral jurisdiction and I say absolutely not I mean neutral jurisdictions really exist in in my view the British system is very very neutral um and I could go into that for a lot of reasons but we're the opposite we're trying to find jurisdictions that are very pro-defense so in a pro-defense um jurisdiction what they're essentially doing through their legislation is they're saying it's not enough to have a cause of action against me you have to have a cause of action against the entity or the structure itself so the question becomes well what did that structure ever do to you you know they they weren't involved in whatever the the issue or the problem is so as long as the trust is holding assets in sort of a passive way even active businesses if they're under a

19:28 corporate structure you know trust can do that and um really that that's how you perpetuate wealth you hold assets you avoid the generational gift and estate tax allow these assets to grow and and by doing that you know you can avoid those certain types of taxes not income tax but but gift and estate tax and you can really allow assets to grow for two three four generations great great thank you um so we're a couple questions away from taking questions from the audience so if you want to raise your hand we can bring a microphone over over to you just to kind of um get those going here in just a minute one other thing I learned while listening to Joel is just that if you wait till there's big storm clouds above you it's too late to go to him for an umbrella you cannot say oh a car's about you know some crash is about to happen in my life uh so I might come after me I better form some structures real quick um so you want to be setting the stuff up before there's a problem is one thing I've learned um if you want to expand on that Jo it'll be great but also just kind of what dollar amount makes sense like if someone has 5 million net worth 10 million net worth 20 million like at what level does it make sense to start working with you since you've worked with so many clients yeah I I'll take the second part first and then Circle back I mean look we we don't have any litmus tests and I think what we tried to do is come up with you know proportional structures that make sense you know we're not going to um suggest a

20:48 very complex structure or strategy to somebody that's got a you know $500,000 um but there's still certainly strategies that you can make at that level we even work with entrepreneurs that are concerned about you know their business uh that they're creating they they think they're going to be the next you know um Microsoft or apple or whatever and essentially their company's worth nothing at the moment but you know what that's actually the best time to do asset protection and estate planning because I can move the that the value of I can move those shares themselves into a structure that protects it preserves it pass it on pass it on to to Future generations and I don't have to worry about tax implication whereas if I wait until that company becomes worth you know millions or potentially billions of dollars there'd be you know there would be a huge um tax consequence sure great and I I do see we have our first question back by John which will take in just a second if anyone else has a question too just raise your hand and we'll try to bring a mic to just touching really fast on the you know you know you do want to do this type of planning before there's a problem you know there's under common law going back you know centuries you get into this concept called a fraudulent conveyance if somebody sues you you it's too late can't run out and say oh I'm going to create a structure you can't call me because I'm not going to help you why because then it's conspiracy to commit

22:05 fraud and I'm you know I'm not your lawyer anymore I'm a co- you know a co-conspirator so you have to do this type of planning when the Sun's shining when the skies are blue and if you do it that way then when the storm clouds roll in later and let's face it we're all going to face storm clouds throughout life through business personal issues are going to arise and and so it's for those moments in time that you're creating the of planning and structures now awesome and then um what million dooll Insight can you give the audience related to getting deals done whether it's acquiring a thousand acres in Central America doing a joint venture with someone growing your bank over 30 years like what's like one of the biggest insights you could share with the room that you think would be relevant that hasn't been talked about at this event you know yet you think enough maybe well for me I always want to be somewhere that's you know where the masses don't want to be and I mean that's not a super unique thing I think a lot of investment people speak in those those terms so you know as a lawyer I don't want to be doing what all the other lawyers are doing in the real estate business uh Mike was talking earlier about for example artique Plantation I mean we bought a giant cow pasture that had been to totally um deforested and then it had been farmed until you know it could no longer be farmed and there were literally cracks in the ground and um you know it looked

23:22 terrible it looked like it was about to turn into desert and you know some I we talked to some some you know some people that were in that industry and we said hey can can you can we actually grow a forest here of of teak and they said well on the edge of the property there's a river and you have the river rights we bought that property for nothing almost nothing and like Mike said the element we were prepared to give up was time so you know it it was this little snowball not worth anything and then it was worth more and more and more and more and now it's you know it's worth a substantial amount of money um and you know you can go Google what a board foot of of um of Teakwood is and you'll see so you know it wasn't that hard to do it just it was thinking with a different uh time Horizon a little bit different lens we are already in the space with our real estate development company um and we came across this opportunity it wasn't ideal for building houses uh but it was ideal for planting trees the beautiful thing about trees by the way is they don't go on strike they're not affected by War famine uh in in uh te actually needs a drought so if it doesn't rain for three or four months that's great um so it was you know it was it was a good U business for us awesome yeah my my talk earlier today was average equals Death that's the last thing you want to

24:39 be and you've said multiple times during this fireside chat and Joel didn't even want to see the questions I was asking his son said yeah Joel read the first one he's like you know what it' be more genuine if we just answer him off the cuff and just say the true answers versus trying to answer him like politician or something so I'll I'll mess him up if I try to do it that way yeah yeah yeah well you already are a politician too so you're natural right so um but yeah that's something we try to reemphasize all the time and we we talk about that at our masterminds don't do what everyone else is doing stand out be different unique so it's awesome that came out naturally so John Let's uh get to the person that has a question by you and then we're have time for a couple more questions if anyone has one we'll bring the mic over to you next uh thank you uh my name is Pierre Dupont and and Richard thank you very much for the good questions and Joe and Joel for your great answers I I loved in particular your comment a moment ago about setting up Dynasty trust I am the very fortunate beneficiary of far less than a million dollars of value to me of a generational trust set up more than 100 years ago which I share with 250 other people take any large number divide by 250 it's pretty small my question for you is um when you set up a dynasty trust what do you suggest what do you do typically about family governance and oversight of the trust that will cross those you know hundred years any comments on the governance and so on yeah that that's a really great question you know when you

25:56 transfer assets to um an asset protection trust you're actually giving up legal you know you're giving up the legal ownership of the asset having said that the trustee A Bank Trust Company whoever is the trustee you know they're in business to serve you to serve your family so you know they're they're going to follow not only the written um language of the document that we draft for you as lawyers but generally they're very open to something called a memorandum of wishes and and that's where you're sort of laying out in a firstperson way your philosophy like hey like if if my kid turns into a drugie you know I don't want them to get a distribution from the trust because you know that at that point the money is just going to be used to to hurt or injure themsel and the the nice thing about that not only does it guide the the trustee but you know if somebody starts challenging the trust normally the trustee can pull this out and say well look your grandfather set up this trust 20 years ago you should really read this and when they when that person reads the first hand letter from their grandfather saying well this is the circumstance where I want people to get money this is where I don't want them to get money you know it usually makes it harder for them to say oh I want to sue the trust because they're you know not looking out for my interests in fact they see that that the trust is looking out exactly for their interest because

27:14 the trust you know job is to follow what the grantor initially wanted in the first place so I hope that helps yeah great great question Pier I couldn't recognize you from here at the bright lights but I appreciate that and um we might do a we're doing this nextg series on YouTube soon A Min series and maybe we can kind of use this as part of that so what would be something that you could share with the room about nextg planning that you've learned with your own family I know you think about that quite a bit any insights or or things you like to share with the audience yeah I mean uh I you know in the last panel somebody was talking a few panels ago they were talking about you know being born in one circumstance and then you know their children are now in a different circumstance I mean I grew up I was really just a poor farm kid honestly from Western Pennsylvania um you know never had two nickels to rub together and you know I always thought when I was little it' be so cool if someday I Could Be A Millionaire well you know I've I've more than exceeded that many times over and um you know I I think one of the other speakers said something about you want what's best for your for your children and of course I want what's best for my children I sent them to the best private schools I wanted to make sure they have every advantage in life uh but having said that you know I don't want them to turn into you know trust fun babies who are laying around on yach at 3:00 in the afternoon getting stoned and and and and drunk right um so you know I think

28:34 moderating what wealth they have access to uh having them come alongside two of my boys working in our businesses one of one of them my son Joe is here he jokingly at the VIP dinner last night said you know as uh second generation his job is to you know fix the um you know the computer the it the password resets and all that it's not really true does way more than that but you know I think it it really is about making sure that they understand that one the advantages that they've had you know my my oldest son for example graduated from medical school and you know he's in his residency right now and he called me up one day and he said dad you know I've never really properly thanked you I said what what for Jimmy and he said well you know I was talking to a group of my friends and they were all telling me about how much student loan debt they have and these guys were telling me they have 300 400 $500,000 in student debt and you know they basically have a mortgage and no house and he said you know I I I really appreciate what you've done for me by letting me start life without you know any debt and I said well great so now you know you have the capacity to make a lot of money so you know don't come and ask me for anymore you know so it's you know it really is trying to you know teach them get get them to the next level themsel and you know I think

29:52 having selfworth value um and for me personally I I will also say you know having two of my sons work in our in our in my business uh has been one of the most interesting things for me I mean like I've achieved every single Financial goal that I ever set out to to to do um I could have retired five years 10 years ago um and you know working with them is for me the most important thing it gives joy to my day to come to work um I love you know imparting what I know to them seeing them sort of take the mantle and you know the real estate company that we started it really is 100-year company I mean we have thousands of Acres all over Central America I'm never going to develop at all my kids probably aren't even going to develop at all it's probably their kids so you know trying to to to introduce them to these Concepts and then seeing what their natural inclination is because they all tend like when when opportunity presents itself they all kind of Go in different directions so my biggest goal is just to try to encourage them and then allow them to you know Embrace things what what Mak sense for them sure great let's see we have uh 40 seconds here but there's a question by John here we'll we'll take it real quick in 15 20 seconds try to get a quick answer and we might be able to run the mic over for one last question here if we do them both real quick uh quick question just the difference between uh you mentioned about the offshore trust and I have a

31:11 friend of mine who has a couple hundred million do um uh fund and he mentioned a specific trust to me under common law and you deal with that type of trust because he was telling me not a lot of um uh us attorneys deal with that type of trust not sure I got the question uh difference between like a dynasty trust and like an offshore trust I think was part of the question he calls it a uh it's called discre discretionary irrevocable non-grantor spendthrift common law trust sounds like a simple question yeah no I'd be very happy to to speak with you in more depth afterwards but let me just say briefly in in this group one of the you know when we set up any kind of structure offshore internationally what we're really doing it imagine it's just dition shopping on steroids why why do people set up companies in Delaware why why do people move to Florida you know there's a real or perceived uh benefit well the same thing is true in the international world and in a lot of jurisdictions they've completely ended statutorily the notion that a trust can only be for a certain fixed period of time like two generations or or 50 years so you have jurisdictions that say hey it's your money you paid tax on it it's legal if you want to lock it up in a dynasty trust for the next thousand years you

32:28 know you have the right to do that so you know when we have clients that want those kind types of structures then we're going to tend to sort of set up those structures in in jurisdictions that permit that that kind of um you know that kind of trust structure but again I think your question was more nuanced than that so I'd be happy to talk to you more afterwards great great yeah thank you very much and we are a little bit over so we'll just have you answer this gentleman's question maybe after the after the fireside chat but uh let's give Joel a big round of applause than