Global asset protection used to be hide-and-seek, and now it's show-and-tell.

[13:44]

"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,"

[19:23]

"So as long as the trust is holding assets in sort of a passive way, even active businesses if they're under a 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,"

[28:21]

"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, moderating what wealth they have access to."

Full transcript

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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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, 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 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 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.