Angelo Robles, the Founder & CEO of SFO Continuity, shares insights on the mindsets, investment strategies, and alternative investments favored by the ultra-wealthy and family offices. We also discuss the potential high-reward opportunities that billionaires are excited about in 2024.
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Transcription
Introduction to Honest Conversations with the Super Rich
Angelo Robles: You have to be able to have honest conversations with the super rich. You can’t kiss their butt. You can’t be a yes man to them. You have to be honest. You have to form a thesis. It needs to be challenged. You need to be able to raise your voice occasionally and have real honest discussions. And does the family understand the impact of fees, of taxes, and of real inflation for the super rich?
Ben Fraser: There’s this thing called.
Understanding the Ultra Wealthy Mindset
Ben Fraser: A different mindset that these ultra wealthy investors have that maybe the average investor doesn’t have. And what are some things that we can maybe learn from and apply on a smaller scale?
Angelo Robles: Mindset is really effectively everything. People with a poor mindset think the world is against them.
Strong people with the right mindset don’t give a You know what? If it is, don’t play the victim. You might be right.
Ben Fraser: Basically, what are the ultra wealthy families doing? He talks about the mindset that differentiates the ultra successful from those that aren’t. He talks about some of the principles of allocation and how they’re thinking about investing. And at the end, he talks about some of the themes. He’s been talking with several billionaires just in the past few weeks about what they are investing in and what they are looking at and thinking about investing in.
And so you definitely want to stay tuned to that part. With that, I hope you enjoyed this show. If you are enjoying it, we always appreciate you sharing, writing a review for us. It’s on your favorite platform of choice and getting the word out. So appreciate you all listening and here you go.
Welcome to the Invest Like a Billionaire Podcast
Ben Fraser: This is the Invest Like a Billionaire podcast where we uncover the alternative investments and strategies that billionaires use to grow wealth.
The tools and tactics you’ll learn from this podcast will make you a better investor and help you build legacy wealth. Join us as we dive into the world of alternative investments, uncover strategies of the ultra wealthy, discuss economics, and interview successful investors.
Welcome back to another episode of the Invest Like a Billionaire podcast. We’ve got a really fun episode for you today. I think you’re really going to enjoy it. I’m your host, Ben Fraser, and we’ve got a special guest host today, Steve Woodruff, who is our Family Office Advisor joining us on the show.
Meet Angelo Robles: Family Office Expert
Ben Fraser: We have Angelo Robles, super excited to have him on. We’ve connected with him a few times outside of the show and said, Hey, we’ve got to have you on you’re just perfect fit for who we’re trying to talk with and understand the minds of the ultra wealthy, how they’re investing, how they built wealth, how they’re preserving, what are they interested in right now?
So there’s a lot to get into Steve, give us a little intro on Angelo. Cause you, you met Angelo at some conferences and had some great connections here.
Steve Woodruff: Yeah, absolutely. So excited to be here with the investment like a billionaire. Listening group and excited to be here with you, Ben. But Angelo is a dynamic individual.
He’s a veteran of the family office space. Multi decades and he’s founded a bunch of different organizations. One is his own family office. He founded the family office association many years ago, which ultimately exited in 2023 he founded. The SFO continuity, which we definitely want to hear more about.
It sounds like an exciting organization that you’re building currently and a number of other things that I, we won’t get into your entire backgrounds, but we’re really excited to have you here. We appreciate you sharing your expertise with us and our listeners.
Angelo Robles: Dead end. Steve, the pleasure is all mine.
Steve. Great to see you again. There’s not, I’m not in person, but hopefully someday soon I will have to go back and change the name of my platform on media from family office TV. I would have talked about investing like a billionaire because I’m actually going to have some insight today. After coming off multiple conversations with billionaires, exactly what they are investing in and what they feel could double and depending on timeline, even 10 X. So I really look forward to it.
Ben Fraser: Oh man, giving us the teaser already. Okay. You hooked everyone in. So before we get there, I do want to just say. Let me share a little bit of your background. How’d you get into this space? The term family office may become more common, more understood, but even a decade ago, no one knew what a family office was.
But talk, how you got into space, how you’ve become a thought leader and how you’ve now, Aggregating these events and having these conversations with billionaires. So give us the humble beginning story and where you got to where you’re at now.
Angelo Robles: Of course. And I’ll make it quick. Cause I know the audience wants to get to the real stuff. It’s not my background. But to give a little bit of framing to that, I’ve been in financial services as an allocator and investor for multiple decades. I had an opportunity to become familiar with the true definition of a family office, which to me is a single family office back in the late nineties.
And a couple of years after that, the opportunity presented itself for me and I’m entrepreneurial by nature to found, as you or Steve noted a little earlier, a family office association out of Greenwich, Connecticut. which is a global membership organization dedicated primarily to single family offices.
Like he noted, I ran that for whatever, about 17 or so years and had an opportunity to have an exit. I wish the current ownership group and management nothing but the best. I’m sure they’ll do a great job. I needed a little time to recharge, to travel the world, to spend time with family, to even meet with incredible families.
And like I said on Even my own platforms, for me having been in the community forever and starting from nothing from the ground up I definitely do not come from one of these kinds of families to some degree. Did I fake it before I made it? Did I have to put in the grind? There’s a verbiage that you’ll hear me use because it’s a little bit innate in me, but it’s probably among the most common traits that I see in billionaires.
They’re comfortable. They’re calm in the thicket of ambiguity. When the world is haywire, when even something in their life may be haywire, that doesn’t mean that they don’t have emotions. It doesn’t mean that they don’t make bad decisions. Of course they do, but they’re comfortable in the thicket of ambiguity.
And when they do make a bad decision, which they absolutely do, They learn and they move on from it. They don’t dwell on it. So for me It was a learned experience learning about the super rich and billionaires and now effectively two plus decades in having Traveled the world having helped to create family offices from nigeria to the middle east to europe to of course My backyard in north america and latin america having met and known 2 000 amazing families and single family offices and Effectively, dozens of billionaires getting to know them personally, sometimes be invited to stay over their homes, to have a drink, to have a cigar, to get to know them personally.
It’s been a very valuable lesson for me. So I do believe in the word obsession, and I know sometimes that has a negative connotation to people. If nothing else, an obsessed mind, is a prepared mind. So how do I focus my purpose into my obsession and my love of understanding what makes people successful, how they become rich, how they become super rich?
What do they do when they’re a billionaire or multi billionaire? And of course, bringing that all into economics, macro, geopolitics, and the world of the family office. I’m not quite going to say I would do this if I wasn’t getting paid, but at this point in my life, I would. I love it. So for me, it’s a passion or an obsession, like I said earlier.
Ben Fraser: Love it.
Defining Family Offices
Ben Fraser: For the purposes of this vernacular, can you explain what is the difference between a single family office, a multifamily office, Billionaire, everyone knows what that term is. Does that inherently mean one of the two? Can you just give us a little bit of vernacular clarification here?
Because I think a lot of people may not understand some of the differences or at this level of wealth what’s usually happening there.
Angelo Robles: Indeed, and actually as I mentioned the Verdiage family office and single family office earlier, you’re right, having been entrenched in it for so long.
I didn’t make the correlation that some people may have heard the term but don’t exactly know what it is. So I adhere to a very traditional definition of that verbiage family office, which we would probably now define as a single family office. That is an entity created by one family of great wealth.
And structures and talent to internally 24 seven manage their finances and often broadly their legacy and their affairs. That doesn’t mean that banks and others and other providers are not needed. They are. But if you want privacy, If you want control and trust me, rich people like control and you want customization, nothing could match what you internally create.
That’s totally dedicated 24 seven to you. Does it take effort and time? Yes. Do a lot of people do it very poorly? Unfortunately, yes. Is it cheap? Absolutely not. But it’s all relative to what you’re looking to accomplish with your wealth, your legacy, and what I define as continuous. How do you procure and how do you help to build unstoppable heirs?
How do you build a legacy potentially generation after generation? I think nothing could quite match a well run and it needs to adapt. It needs to. Change here and there over the years. I’m not saying anything about that. So I adhere to a very classic and traditional definition. A multifamily office came into more of a vernacular a couple of decades ago.
We are the true definition. Is actually a little closer to what I described as a single family office, but as opposed to single, it has the word multi. So that would imply more than one in the past. It might have been closer to 2 or 10 families banding together to share resources and expenses. And create what we would call a multifamily office now. I’m not going to bore the audience with scc registration what’s needed what’s not needed Most single family offices do not have to worry about that.
Whereas a multifamily office Usually will today’s definition of sometimes broadly the word multifamily office or even family office I hate to say bastardized. But yes It has no licensing. It has no real traditional definition. Anyone could use that term because it sounds fancy. Usually it means someone effectively who’s an RIA or a wealth manager that thinks they want to work in more of the ultra high net worth market.
Therefore, they slack off at the verbiage family office. On their title, on their name, or in their verdiage, I think usually it’s unearned. Now, we could go into a virtual family office. Technically, a single family office could be intimate, small, and a virtual family office as well. That could be perhaps the subject for a different time, because there’s lots of nuances in that.
And usually, I’m an advocate of really you’re trying to build leadership and culture, yet you’re not in a set location, how are you going to train younger talent, and, I hate to say that people could sometimes benefit from some top down, tough love, holding them accountable. And paying them very well, if they get the job done, I think that’s harder.
I didn’t say it’s impossible. I think it’s harder when it’s remote. You, as an employee, of course you want that because it’s easier for you. But that doesn’t mean it’s better for the family, the company, or whatever it is that you represent. For some of you that are very self motivating and talented, And have that experience.
It may be the better option, but again, I’m, I’ll get off a little bit of my whore high horse, but that’s the relatively by my standards, simplistic answer to your question.
Ben Fraser: Yeah. I appreciate that. That’s super helpful. And like you said, the term has become a lot more commonly used and it can mean different things to different people as phrases that become more common.
Mindset and Investment Strategies of the Ultra Wealthy
Ben Fraser: Do from our perspective, it’s really, we’re excited to dig in here because the whole purpose of the show is to invest like a billionaire, right? What we want to do is learn from the ultra wealthy. What are they doing? How do they think differently? How do they plan differently? How do they invest differently?
And one of the kind of key differences we’ve noticed and where a lot of say more retail investors, that are not quite at that level yet. The biggest difference we find is asset allocation. And from our study and what we’ve seen the data on, these larger investors are generally having large allocations into the private equity markets, whether that be actual businesses or real estate and different types of those asset classes.
And, there’s a big push in the broader world. Kind of movement of capital capital markets to be more open to a broader swath of investors to invest in those. So that’s obviously a big part of what we talk about is the alternative investments. But talk a little bit about before we get to the investment side of things, what are the differences you found, right?
Because some of coming from humble beginnings and getting to the place you’re at now, you’ve seen a lot along the way, and maybe you’ve experienced a lot of different things in your own kind of investing journey or entrepreneurial journey to where there’s this, a different mindset at these family offices, these ultra wealthy investors have that may be.
The average investor doesn’t have, and what are some things that we can maybe learn from and apply, at a smaller scale?
Angelo Robles: Ben, that’s actually really good. And before we start to get into the sexy stuff of thematic investments and perhaps even some very specific ones that families are mentioning to me, mindset is really effectively everything.
As I went through it from being dirt poor to having some level of resources, as I get to travel the world on all continents and effectively research and meet with families, And as I get to interview amazing people, I’ve interviewed Tony Robbins multiple times, Ray Dalio, Steve Cohen, Peter Thiel, General Wesley Clark.
I could go on and on. It’s an honor for me. They’re doing me a favor and I’m being curious, asking them questions, maybe getting to know them personally, which some of them I have and really learning from them. So there’s a bit of a phrase that others have heard me say before. I may need to clean it up a little bit for your podcast, but basically it’s something like this.
Weak people, or people with a poor mindset, think the world is against them. Strong people, with the right mindset, don’t give a you know what if it is. Don’t play the victim. You might be right. Aspects of the world might actually be a little bit against you, for a variety of reasons. Welcome to the real world.
You still have to go out there and get it done. What are the challenges that I see? And again, I come from an area of a broken home. I’m half latino half white and we could all make excuses for our condition. It’s the mindset. I think I’ve heard somewhere That by age three more successful people have been exposed to 5, 000 words Versus closer to 3, 000 for less successful people.
They also get positive affirmations seven out of 10 times versus no, Johnny, don’t do that. No, you can’t do that. No, you can’t be a center on the Lakers. You hear that. And that impacts your mindset. So mindset is very important, especially in your formative years. And I mentioned something, like I said before, being comfortable in the thicket of ambiguity.
Now, when the other aspects that you spoke about confidence can’t be measured, but competence could be. So less of a focus, although maybe initially fake it till you make it on the confidence, but more so on your capability, your competence. So I look at that. I could go deep on this into what’s called capacity and capability.
And these are all things that you could work on. And if it wasn’t taught to you, don’t be bitching and moaning about it. Just take the initiative and do it yourself. There’s others out there besides me that, and many of them, I mentioned Tommy Robbins before, these are all things that could help get your inner frame and your mindset. These are people that take risks. Sometimes they’re calculated. These are people that are more concentrated in their investments and their risks. More than you would think meaning it may be hard to get rich If you’re investing in a thousand different things, you’re going to be too watered down You’re going to be too much what the market is doing the rich people like control that I mentioned earlier And when it comes to assets like private companies and things that we’ll get into and structuring holding companies You bet you they like to be contrarian, they like distressed opportunities.
And when I get to giving some examples of themes of investments, you’re going to hear me mention a couple that you’re going to go to, whoa, I really, this is really down like 40, 50 percent now? Yes. And that’s good. If you are dry powder, you have patience and you have capability. To do very well.
Ben Fraser: Yeah, absolutely. It’s interesting because you have to talk with a lot of investors that earn their wealth, not like a traditional family office, which is generally going to be a business owner. They start a business or some generation down and they grow it and they have an exit and that creates the foundation of the family office.
But yeah, for those that are maybe working professionals or small entrepreneurs, they’re going to achieve that level of wealth. But what’s interesting and what I’ve found is a lot of people. They’re very smart, right? They have a high level of competence in one area, but they, for some reason, don’t feel they have capacity or confidence in the investment side.
And whether that’s the mainstream media and the financial services industry trying to sell that you need us to help you figure it out or there are complicated things involved in this. There seems to be this just handing the keys over to the kingdom to somebody else that probably doesn’t have your true best interests in mind.
At a minimum, it’s not going to care about the money that you’ve earned as much as you do. And what I’ve found is a lot of people don’t, they invest a very small fraction of time learning how to. Make their money grow how to earn money on their money than they do on how to make money, right? Like it will go spend, decade plus in school to go learn how to earn income. They’re in the income and they handstand it all over somebody else to manage and you know Now I’m just gonna stay over here.
Stay focused on what I’m doing. Good at not even thinking about that, but there’s to me a huge huge disadvantage when you do that. Because to your point earlier, there’s a lot of transferable things, but there’s also a lot of these wealthy families that want to have some level of control. They want to understand what they’re investing in, and there needs to be a level of confidence.
And we’re going to get into some of these themes I’m really excited about. And many times you have to be somewhat contrarian, right? If you’re investing with the herd, you’re going to get the herd returns, which are generally average or below average if you take out fees. So to have confidence, to have conviction, it takes a level of competence and conviction in yourself that you have the ability to make the decision.
So talk a little bit about maybe You know, that mindset and that journey for you, maybe other things you’ve seen where there’s a disconnect on that mindset piece. And how does someone gain the confidence to bring that, to be able to do this themselves versus just relying 100 percent on somebody else and just do what they tell them to do.
The Journey to Wealth and Investment Confidence
Angelo Robles: I wasn’t born knowing about entrepreneurship, about learning about or knowing about investing. Therefore, how could I develop confidence which again, can’t be measured. Go back to the great work of Peter Drucker. How are you going to improve what can’t be measured? I worked on my capability, which led to my competency in entrepreneurship.
In investing and effectively taking action. I could be the person who spends forever in school and that’s wonderful. If that’s what you want, maybe you want to become an economist, but that is absolutely no guarantee that’s going to make you a great investor. Sadly, I know way too many macro and economists that are wonderfully intelligent, great people.
They make some of the worst hedge funds and managers out there, whether they overthink things, whether. If they look at anything from a risk perspective, but that’s how you make real money. Otherwise, why don’t I just invest in the S& P 500 and triple Q and go to sleep? Because I’m probably going to kick your actively investing butt net of fees anyway.
There’s really only a small percentage, maybe 10 percent that are truly gonna quote unquote rise above that. Now there are also other ways that I could answer your question. is I’m not orderly educated. I educated myself, but I became good at understanding humans in networking and interacting with emotional intelligence and I focused on sales and I was able to control my income by becoming good at something that maybe didn’t require a hell of a lot of schooling or deep education and that allowed me to earn more money.
And that allowed, you know what, I hate to say it, earning, making more money, it helps to solve some problems that you got to put in the grind, you got to put in the work, and then you start to learn about saving, then you start to learn about investing, and as Robert Kiyosaki wrote about in his books, when you’re able to be at a point when your investments, whether through dividends, interest, real estate incomes, are making more money than your earnings, I’m going to say, I’m a big fan of C Saint, Chef, I literally just don’t know if I should go online and search in online, if it’s a good investment, and all I know is that it’s absolutely the best investment out there.
C Saint, and I just go online, and I think it’s right for people to take advantage of it. That puts you in a powerful position. Is that going to happen in a month, a year, or even 10 years? Probably not. But if you hear as much as possible, If you stay focused on your purpose, if you know how to strategically save money and better, how to invest it properly, then you’re able to build out the portfolio.
I absolutely know people, and it’s the hard way to go about it, so people don’t want to do it, but after 30 or 40 years, they have amassed millions to hundreds of millions of dollars. By doing exactly what I said. Now we all want the way out from creating a company. It exponentially goes up in value. We have liquidity, and we’re billionaires.
Yeah, that is sexier. And yes, that is the one that I admit is probably going to get the most views and the most interest when I talk about that versus option one. So I want option two as well, but I know that you could accomplish some level of success, the option one that I described. Cause you have time on your side, especially if you’re starting at young.
And in case you’re wondering, that’s a little different in your question. In my research and my knowledge and working and investing with incredibly successful people, including billionaires, is there a difference between the actual wealth creator and let’s call it the non bloodline executive in a family office who runs the Capitol?
The answer is yes. And no surprise here. But Creator is a little more of a gunslinger, a little more of a risk taker, and they’re able to connect the dots on opportunities that could do very well. But if I’m an executive in a family office, for the most part, there’s always exceptions. I’m going to think of one of Warren Buffett’s great sayings, rule number one, don’t lose money.
Rule number two, remember rule number one. Now, when you’re really rich, that’s not necessarily a bad philosophy, but is it going to exponentially grow your money? Probably not. So this creates a dichotomy between someone who’s a wealth creator and entrepreneur versus someone who’s a millionaire.
Who may be more guarded and more careful now, don’t get me wrong. Are there times when that wealth creator, that gunslinger needs to have someone to bounce ideas off of that tells them no, that challenges their thesis? Absolutely. Because sometimes they rush into things too quickly and too aggressively, but that’s also.
What made them a billionaire versus, yeah, really well, but it’s not a billionaire. So like when I would approach billionaires about an opportunity in AI or back when I was extremely active in crypto, even though they may be older and may scoff at it initially, they’re willing to listen to the opportunity.
And they’re intelligently saying. Why don’t I form a thesis? Why don’t I move quick if I need to, if it’s that kind of opportunity and why don’t I limit my exposure by simply how much I invest if I’m allocating 50 basis points or one or 2%, I’m going to be disappointed if it goes to zero, but it’s going to have zero impact on me.
So you control your risk to a degree. I’ve learned by the allocations that you make versus others that may have needed. We have a committee. I don’t know. It sounds a little risky. It’s going to take a couple of months before it gets there. I’m going to get in trouble if it goes down 1%, like all things, because you’re afraid to talk to the principal and set the framework of the expectations.
Now, maybe you do need to be more conservative and that is what it is. On the other hand, you’re probably also missing out on certain exponential opportunities. From that perspective. So I know I went in a little different direction with your question. Oh, that’s great. Different directions. But I felt it might’ve been needed.
Steve Woodruff: Yeah, actually with those non bloodline managers. Do you think they’re just more conservative because of how they’re essentially compensated? Like here’s a salary. There’s no upside to participate in. If they do a great job, they could lose their jobs. They cost the family money. Or do you think it’s really just the mandate that the families have given them?
Don’t lose this money. So is it coming from the top and assigned to that manager or do they interpret that themselves and look at.
Honest Conversations with the Super Rich
Angelo Robles: Even if it’s coming from the top, does the family understand what they’re saying? And that by neutering the professional who may actually want to become more aggressive and assertive in certain investment situations, I think you have to be able to have honest conversations with the super rich.
You can’t kiss their butt. You can’t be a yes man to them. Or a woman, whatever, like you have to be honest. You have to form a thesis. It needs to be challenged. You need to be able to raise your voice occasionally and have real honest discussions. And does the family who may not be as familiar with the world of investing understand the impact of fees of taxes and of real inflation for the super rich that eat filet mignon?
They travel to expensive locations to buy expensive things. Do you really think that person’s real inflation is 4%? It is absolutely not 4%. Therefore, if they’re investing too conservatively net of fees, taxes, and the truth. Impact of inflation, their purchasing power over time greatly erodes. But that being said, usually it’s the first option that you noted.
Very good question.
Incentivizing Talent in Family Offices
Angelo Robles: You need to understand incentives. And yes, you would probably want to incentivize your talent to be able to take some level of risk and participate. And there’s a variety of executive compensation strategies to make that happen. In a part of the upside, like whenever I give the history of the iconic Sid Bass and plucking out of Goldman Sachs, the then 26 year old Richard Rainwater, who would become an invested legend and a billionaire in his own right.
And you look at the two co-founders of Michael Dell’s family office at MSD back in the late 90s, they probably made a couple of hundred million dollars each. Rainwater became a billionaire. Yeah, there’s talented people out there that could possibly duplicate that level of success, but they don’t know how to communicate it.
They maybe just don’t have the guts to move forward and have open and honest discussions. And the alignment of interest, both good and bad, including for conflicts.
Challenges and Opportunities in Family Offices
Angelo Robles: Is something very important that you want to have be totally transparent in the family office that this gets to other subjects.
Do principals or the board of the family office have too many guardrails and handcuffs on the potential talent? Are they paying them properly? So let me get this right. You want to have a top performing quote unquote family office, but you don’t really want to pay for it. So in my opinion, why the hell have a family office if you’re not looking to make it great?
And in my estimation, maybe 3 percent of family offices are great. I’ll admit that’s somewhat qualitative from my perspective. Not everything could be measured, although I would love it. On the quantitative side, but that’s sad. I have a saying that I could basically go into any family office, and at least get them a hell of a lot above mediocrity very quickly, with practice management techniques and principles, often, without even changing people.
But honestly, Since people are the most important thing within the family office, sometimes changes, adaptations are needed, and that can have a drastic impact relative to leadership, to culture, to the ability to strategize, to think critically, and to execute.
Investment Strategies and Risk Management
Ben Fraser: Yeah, you made me think of another principle you mentioned that Warren Buffett said, which is, first rule of investing, don’t lose money.
Second rule, don’t forget rule number one, there’s absolute truth to that. And it’s a great kind of benchmark to try not to lose money. But the unintended consequence you’re getting to here is that if your primary goal is not to lose money, then You’re going to take almost no risk.
And what’s the point then of having, paying people to go and try and find opportunities when you can just go invest passively in S and P or the triple Q or just in money markets for that matter. So I think there’s an element of, you have to take risks to earn above market returns, defining what risks you want to take.
And then I think you made a great point too, is putting buckets of risk. Parameters of how much am I willing to throw into the moonshot, bucket, right? You don’t want to put 50 percent there. Absolutely not. That doesn’t make sense to the principles allocation, but maybe you put 5 percent right and you’re okay to lose that.
But if that Produces a potential 10 X return, that might be worth the risk you’re taking. And so to me, I think it’s interesting, I’m glad that you brought that up because I think some of you will latch onto that. You take it to a very watered down level that actually goes against the principles of investing, which means you have to take risk, right?
Any level of investing. means you’re taking some type of risk to find what that is.
The Role of Private Alternatives in Portfolios
Ben Fraser: What last question I want to ask you before we get to the, some of the themes here, and I don’t want to go long on this cause I’m sure there’s a whole bunch you could talk on it, but where do you find, what are the kind of primary reasons or purposes that you find family offices use private alternatives for in a portfolio?
And what purposes that serve the broader portfolio versus just investing a hundred percent into S and P or triple Q.
Angelo Robles: Sure. And that is a thought leadership discussion. And there are certain topics in the world of investing that if we had hours to talk about and some of it would be Very boring to people structuring an investment policy statement or in larger families Depending on entities represented and family units may be multiple Investment policy statements which may have different strategic tactical or core satellite allocation strategies again, admittedly probably somewhat boring topics But within the world of the family office and the work that I do You do need to have those discussions.
What are the goals? What is the risk tolerance? What’s the liquidity? And God forbid you mess around with a family or a rising family member’s distributions that you could always get, which is why the role of the family executive is somewhat faithless, but it’s a job. It’s a job that often pays, even though they’re more frugal than I would like compared to most positions.
And trust me, there are way more people. Yeah. I took my cigar out after this interview. It’s being lit up and popped. I enjoy the wonderful aroma of it. There are way more people looking to get in and work in a family office. So there are people to get out. So there’s a finite number of quote unquote, super rich people.
The Evolution and Future of Family Offices
Angelo Robles: And by the way, The majority two thirds of real single family offices have been created in this century and two thirds of that two third really since 2019 in the last five years, which means more jobs and positions. There’s also more family offices that don’t have the experiences that have they really been through trying times you could argue during COVID.
And the majority of family offices will not make it, will not make it, as the research has shown over the past 15 years. Finally, back to your question though Ben, on that question, and I’m partially headquartered in Greenwich, Connecticut, which at one time, pound for pound, was probably the hedge fund capital of the world.
And they would argue that artificially suppressed interest rates had made it harder for active managers in public markets to be successful. And the reality that fees being a passive investor for much of the last 20 or 30 years probably kicks the butt net of fees of the vast majority of active public markets potent folk managers, whether that’s partially Because of artificially suppressed rates.
Probably that’s a part of it, but again, we don’t need to make it an economic discussion. I think there were certain alternative managers, depending on how you define alternatives, whether more traditionally real estate, whether longshore, whether merge, ARB. Whether so called buying into an LP interest in private companies, private equity, or venture capital.
We didn’t talk about venture capital. Venture capital is cool. Venture capital is sexy. Incredible things can happen in venture capital. It also has been a terrible last couple of years for venture capital. Promises, not reality of income. The big monster players often get it wrong. And by the way, you as even a billion dollar family have no chance of getting into a lot of the giants and VC out there.
And if I invested where I’m liquid and the triple Q, I would have kicked the butt. In the last five years of probably 90 percent plus of venture capital. Venture capital is cool. It’s an insider’s game. And if you don’t really know it and understand it, you’re playing a bit of a very tough game for you to win.
So could alternatives do well, you have to factor in sometimes a lack of transparency, a possible lack of control. If it’s more of an LP interest in the fund. And net of fees, which could often be sizable. Are you really going to do better compared to a more passive benchmark or a business interest that you control?
I’m going to take the point at least relatively recently. You’re probably not now, or we’re going to be some, let me call it 10%. They’re going to rise to the top. Yeah. You have to find out who those are and get involved in them. Sure. But again, I go back to you, you need to take responsibility. You need to build a right holding company and family office, and you need to ingratiate and immerse yourself in this to be better than the so-called professionals that often have too much capital.
They can’t invest in smaller, nimble things that can make them money. They can’t move fast. They have to deploy capital. You have no control. Again, there’s going to be 10 percent that are going to be awesome. And some of them you have no chance of getting into, but even then I’m not going to have control.
And as you could probably tell, I am a little bit of a control kind of guy. That’s just me. Not everyone’s going to be like that, but most families, at least the wealth creating principles are.
Steve Woodruff: That was awesome. I know we’re eager to discuss the investment themes that you’re excited about. But one, one final question before we get there, can you tell us what you’re doing with your new organization?
SFO continuity. What’s the purpose of that organization?
Angelo Robles: Sure. So as noted, I founded and built a family office association that was a labor of love. I was also fortunate. I had two incredible presidents, but maybe I’m good at making hires. They work incredibly hard. I had a great board and early supporters.
I would have been nothing if it wasn’t for that. So I’m greatly appreciative. But part of that is building the right culture and building a team. So that is important. And I will take some credit for that and lock in good timing and all that good stuff. But I sold it. I had an opportunity to step back, to travel, to create my own LLCs and effectively family office holding company, beginning to create a private trust company and loving some of the incredible benefits of a great state like Wyoming and the opportunity that presents me.
And it really is a very exciting time, but I love, I mentioned the word obsessed earlier, anything and everything around a family office, around investing around legacy, continuity, unstoppable heirs, and even things like virtual and multifamily offices fall within my office to a degree. And I earned my competency decade after decade, a long time of this and knowing incredible people that teach me so much.
I do have a platform on YouTube. I have multiple at family office and family office TV, where I do a lot of long form, pretty darn intense interviews with incredible people. Tommy Robbins just happens to be one of them, but a lot of people like Adam Robinson, Joey Caruso, Jamie McLaughlin, I could go on and on.
And some of these are multi hour intense, bordering on debate type. Interviews. The industry is often boring and vanilla. I don’t want to be that. I want to talk openly on geopolitical, macro, and economic issues, tie that into investing in obviously the family office world, and I’m not caring about being politically correct.
I want to tell the truth, at least from my perspective, and sometimes I learn, and I adapt, and I change. So I also love to educate and create family offices. I do that through my arm at the family office masterclass that I own. And then what you’re mentioning now is I really did miss families coming together.
So I created SFO continuity. Those that go to angelo robles. com, you’ll see a membership tab. And right now, and I just did this a couple of months ago, I’m looking for 30 founding members who are incredible investors whose families are incredibly successful individuals. And of course, family offices. I’m pretty close to 30.
Once we have the founding members, we’ll take a several month pause on new membership. But the founders are charter members forever. They get a certain status and they get favorable pricing and others in the end will never get. And besides my content, which is extensive and deep, if I may pat myself on the back again, I think the industry is lacking in creativity.
It’s lacking in complete opaqueness and what works in the real world in the trenches of wealth investing and family offices. So my best practices, my practice management that I do in writing and video and proprietary video format is important. Do you know what I really learned? Nothing. As I used to do back in the day, nothing beats face to face.
So for me, we make New York and Palm Beach our homes, occasionally Jackson Hole, LA, Austria. So we’re global. And we look to get together 20 to 30 times a year, breakfast meetings, lunches, forums, in person masterclasses, social gatherings and soirees, cigar club meetings, and have an opportunity to go peer to peer, shoulder to shoulder with some of the greatest investors and family offices on earth.
And I don’t accept sponsors or vendors to be a part of it. That doesn’t mean they don’t provide value. That doesn’t mean we may not invite one in to grill them. And it doesn’t mean that there’s no opportunities to jointly align to do some things. But my club, my private group, SFO Continuity, my membership club, is completely dedicated directly to those families.
We have a couple of founding member spots left. You can find it on my website or reach out to me. We are active as can be this summer. I’m literally doing 12 to 14 events this summer. I already got 7 in the books that are done with and more to come. And it’s been a blast. Thank you.
But again, I know that’s not providing direct value back to your audience. So I’m ready to hopefully.
Steve Woodruff: We’ll send a link for anyone who’s interested in the show. notes.
Angelo Robles: Thank you so much.
Ben Fraser: All right.
Insights from Billionaires: Investment Themes
Ben Fraser: Angelo you teased us all the very beginning. Here’s the theme. Now it’s time to, for the big reveal. Give us, just for the sake of time here, give us maybe top two, top three, you’ve had some conversations you said just recently with billionaires, ultra wealthy.
These are the things they’re talking about and behind closed doors. Give us some insights. What are the conversations being had? What are the things they’re interested in that may be contrarian to what we’re hearing?
Angelo Robles: Let’s do it. And I’m going to give you more than two or three, but I’m going to not go deep.
I’m going to bust through them. So you’ll get, and none of them are going to be a cigar company. Although I may, if there’s one sale, I may have an interest in that for my holding company. I want to, again, there you go. So one multimillionaire combining with others is very interested in the dynamic of looking at a public company.
And effectively utilizing investment bankers, leveraged buyout, tender offer, proxy solicitations, possibly buying it, taking it quote unquote private, and then maybe taking it public again. Look at things like Walgreens at a very high level, but maybe more reasonable, something like a Petco or a Nordstrom’s.
So now we’re talking about the multi-billionaires Possibly combining with two or three others and using that force to be dynamic, including in the public markets. I’d mentioned VC earlier, even if you could get into Y Combinator. We’re going to look at 600 different companies over the course of the year. How do you know which one of those three to five are potentially really going to take off?
You got to be part of that insiders club and sometimes buy your way in there or provide influence. But for the most part, it takes 14. 4 percent a year to double your money after only five years. So if I’m worth a billion, could I be worth two billion reasonably in five years at 14. 4%? I mentioned it earlier.
I know it’s boring. A lot of the Magnificent Seven makeup what’s in the triple Q. It’s passive, very low fee, I’m totally liquid, and I’m getting a hell of a lot more the last couple of years, admittedly, other than 2022, but even collectively in a five year window, above that number, above. I’d look at individual holdings still expanding at AI and the infrastructure of it, NVIDIA never better get up and Meta or, aka Facebook.
I think Microsoft has a great CEO. They don’t quite have the technology AI technologists that some of the others Google meta has, but they have a wonderful structure and leadership and a great CEO in pharmaceutical. I would look at Lily. And potentially if you’re super rich, I do what’s called block trade.
I would look at energy. I’d look at oil and gas. I’d look at liquefied natural gas that the markets have not fully caught up with yet. But when we look at the need for energy, I’m fascinated by nuclear power and what Bill Gates is doing in Wyoming. I think that could provide. Interesting opportunities moving forward.
Given that I am a little bit of a wet three in crypto guy, do I believe you could double your money in five years in Bitcoin? For sure. And do I think it could be viable for some? A little bit of a contrarian bet, I hinted at it earlier, is commercial real estate. Shocking that I’m saying this, possibly even in places like San Francisco and New York.
If you’re telling me, That those cities show some potential, and that’s debatable, some potential to get their shit together, to do things right, but I could buy into at a 50, 60, 70 percent discount now, and then I could help locally, politically, and I have the right connections. To make the right decisions and bring the right people in.
I think commercial real estate in those areas could be very intriguing. I mentioned creating a holding company and rolling up certain industries. Personally, I’m interested in cattle ranches. I think there’s a very interesting opportunity in place there. I think even RV parks are another one. If you want to be a little funny, but some families did bring up mining asteroids.
I’m interested in sports. I am specifically looking at the rise now of the WNBA, a female sport. I think it’s an opportunity in one of my states in Connecticut. There’s no professional sports team other than the WNBA franchise, the Sun. Who owns it? Who are the casinos around it up in northern Connecticut?
And can I control hotels, entertainment in a 25 to 50 mile radius? I have one family that had a 300 X return on a seven figure investment. Some of it was luck, but part of it was proper networking in the world of big tech and AI and basically NVIDIA and the rise of AI. I won’t mention the name of the company, but certainly made that take off.
What could 10X, although maybe more so in 10 years? First of all, I have no idea. I could always be wrong. Do your own diligence, make your own decisions. Everything that I just said, I think is a good thematic play. Quote unquote. I could argue over 2, 5, 10 years in the world of WET3, because I think Bitcoin’s going to have some limitations, but I think it’s still solid as a, One or 3 percent allocation in the family, but if they wanted to be more aggressive, I would say Solana is probably poised to overtake Ethereum.
I think in a couple of years, I think Solana could be an excellent play where you could possibly earn five or 10 extra dollars in a couple of years. If you want to, you want something that could potentially be a hundred apps. I would look at the world of social tokens. We’re not there yet. There’s some regulatory issues with the SCC.
That’s a web three kind of crypto play, but it’s complex involves blockchain and NFTs. But I think social tokens are going to be very intriguing. Some people call them a fan token. I think Taiwan Semiconductor, I mentioned Meta, I mentioned Lilly, I wouldn’t discount things like Apple and Dell. Dell is doing some interesting things.
That could be one that also really has a chance to take off. Part of this is going to depend on interest rates. So they’re going to come down and be cut and that’s going to cause a rise. Are they going to stay stable? Are they going to go up? And that could, of course, have an impact on things as well.
So those are some thematic points and some maybe more specific ideas. And a lot of this comes in the last 30 days from research, from me hosting my member breakfast, lunch, and dinner meetings that are investment centric about giving us your best ideas in terms of what you’re doing. Now again, are there people making more targeted bets on things that could absolutely go to zero, but like in venture capital could go up 100 or 200x?
Yes, but most people aren’t necessarily going to do that. Maybe I’ll leave your audience with a little bit of what I said earlier. Think of creating a holding company. Think of buying directly into private companies. Think of rolling up a sector. Look at the work, on X and her platforms that like Cody Sanchez does about buying blue collar type businesses, the children don’t want to run that kind of company.
You can enhance the operations, enhance the marketing and social media. I’m doing it. Other families I know are doing it. And some of this is just too small or off the grid of the larger private equity firms. But don’t have them scare you away. Still, if you’re a larger scale family that needs to move the needle, there’s a variety of ways that you could do that.
You could absolutely out fox, outcompete, and win against quote unquote institutions and the big players. And as you could tell, I get a little fired up and this will be fired up shortly. It’s a really exciting topic that I love to talk about.
Ben Fraser: Love it. You definitely over delivered on more than two.
So that was I’m actually listening to that on replay again, guys. So that’s awesome. Thanks for sharing all those. And Angelo, super fun conversation.
Conclusion and Final Thoughts
Ben Fraser: We’ll have to have you back at another time. And for all those that are listening and like what Angelo is sharing, definitely head on over to his channel, Family Office TV.
If you’re interested in joining this cohort of the single family continuity company he’s doing. We’ll link that as well in the description. So Angelo, it was such a pleasure. So fun to connect over, over the podcast here and hope to have you on another time.
Angelo Robles: Gentlemen, you’re great. I greatly appreciated that.
Ben and Steve, it was an honor to be on and I look forward to the next stop.
Ben Fraser: Awesome. Thanks.
This is the Invest Like a Billionaire podcast where we uncover the alternative investments and strategies that billionaires use to grow wealth. The tools and tactics you’ll learn from this podcast will make you a better investor.
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