Dec. 16, 2025
137: Here's how I turned $3M into $200K/yr cash flow
In 2012, 97% of one portfolio was tied to a single stock—a position that felt incredible when the market was up and terrifying when it wasn’t. Traditional advisors had no real solution beyond a generic 60/40 allocation and a “withdraw 4% in retirement” plan, none of which addressed the real challenge: reducing concentration risk, generating income today, and still growing long-term wealth. That search for a better path led to studying how ultra-wealthy families manage their money—and discovering a completely different playbook.
Family offices don’t rely on the drawdown model most people are taught. Instead, they use what’s known as the Evergreen Portfolio, a structure that organizes assets into growth, income, and preservation buckets—all working together to produce cash flow without selling assets. It’s the difference between treating your portfolio like a silo that empties over time and an orchard that produces fruit year after year.
The turning point came from building an Investment Thesis—a clear strategy for goals, risk tolerance, asset allocation, and expected returns. With that blueprint in place, a multi-year reallocation replaced concentrated equity positions with a balanced structure aligned to long-term freedom. The result: a portfolio generating over $200,000 per year in cash flow while still increasing in total value by more than $2 million.
This video breaks down that entire transformation and shows why people with $1M to $30M often get the worst wealth management advice—and how the Micro Family Office approach gives you the structure, income, and strategy that traditional advisors can’t. If you want a portfolio that reduces risk, generates real income, and grows year after year without relying on hope, this is the model to follow.
Transcript
WEBVTT
00:00.031 --> 00:05.077
[SPEAKER_00]: In 2012, 97% of my net worth was tied up in a single stock.
00:05.237 --> 00:08.461
[SPEAKER_00]: When the market was up, I felt like a financial genius.
00:08.721 --> 00:12.846
[SPEAKER_00]: But when it was at all time, lows, my anxiety was at an all-time high.
00:13.246 --> 00:15.208
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a ticking time bomb.
00:15.228 --> 00:26.241
[SPEAKER_00]: I knew something had to change, but it seemed next to impossible to find somebody who understood my goals and had the experience working with people at my portfolio size.
00:26.221 --> 00:39.040
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, financial advisors kept feeding me cookie-cutter advice, and on the other side, family offices required a hundred million dollar minimums that I didn't have, so I started digging deeper for another path.
00:39.060 --> 00:44.668
[SPEAKER_00]: That's when I discovered what ultra wealthy families actually do differently and it changed everything.
00:44.909 --> 00:53.241
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm Christopher Nelson, and today, my portfolio generates over
00:53.221 --> 00:54.262
[SPEAKER_00]: each and every year.
00:54.623 --> 00:58.267
[SPEAKER_00]: In today's video, I'm going to share how you can do the same.
00:58.287 --> 01:00.509
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me take you back to that moment in 2012.
01:00.689 --> 01:04.413
[SPEAKER_00]: I just gone through my first IPO at Splunk.
01:04.433 --> 01:14.264
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm sitting there watching the NASDAQ screen with my colleagues and our stock price jumps from 17 to 34 in the first few minutes of trading.
01:14.505 --> 01:17.608
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, I had expected to make about 1.5 million.
01:17.588 --> 01:21.031
[SPEAKER_00]: I ended up with $3.3 million dollars.
01:21.372 --> 01:24.495
[SPEAKER_00]: It's sort of melt your mind when something like that happens.
01:24.515 --> 01:28.399
[SPEAKER_00]: But here's the side that no one shares with you about sudden wealth.
01:28.679 --> 01:30.701
[SPEAKER_00]: I had a six month lock-out period.
01:31.281 --> 01:32.663
[SPEAKER_00]: My wife wanted to buy a house.
01:33.083 --> 01:34.585
[SPEAKER_00]: She was pregnant with her first son.
01:34.845 --> 01:40.330
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm sitting on this concentrated position that could evaporate just as fast as it appeared.
01:40.651 --> 01:43.073
[SPEAKER_00]: So, I do what you're supposed to do.
01:43.053 --> 01:54.405
[SPEAKER_00]: I called financial advisors and you know what, every single one of them told me, diversify into a 60, 40 portfolio of index funds and bonds and withdraw 4% a year when you retire.
01:54.626 --> 01:55.408
[SPEAKER_00]: The problem?
01:56.148 --> 01:57.190
[SPEAKER_00]: that wasn't my goal.
01:57.510 --> 02:03.399
[SPEAKER_00]: I wanted to exit the rat race early and their solution gave me no income replacement strategy.
02:03.579 --> 02:06.303
[SPEAKER_00]: And frankly, I was part of the problem as well.
02:06.584 --> 02:11.711
[SPEAKER_00]: I had been treating my biggest asset, my portfolio, like a side project.
02:11.992 --> 02:16.198
[SPEAKER_00]: So I dove deeper into studying how family offices actually operate.
02:16.178 --> 02:19.703
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, if you aren't familiar with the family office concept, picture this.
02:20.024 --> 02:25.071
[SPEAKER_00]: When you have a hundred million dollars or more, you don't just call the financial advisor at Maryland.
02:25.431 --> 02:33.343
[SPEAKER_00]: You build your own private company with a full staff, investment managers, tax strategist, estate attorneys, accountants.
02:33.323 --> 02:39.694
[SPEAKER_00]: all focused exclusively on growing and protecting your family's wealth across generations.
02:40.014 --> 02:41.517
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a family office.
02:41.777 --> 02:49.290
[SPEAKER_00]: It's treating wealth management as a serious business operation, not a side conversation with an advisor once a quarter.
02:49.270 --> 02:56.865
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, while I was getting a behind-the-scenes education on how family offices operate, I discovered something fascinating.
02:57.105 --> 03:01.815
[SPEAKER_00]: They weren't following the advice my financial advisors were giving me at all.
03:02.195 --> 03:06.163
[SPEAKER_00]: I quickly realized they were operating on a completely different playbook.
03:06.384 --> 03:09.209
[SPEAKER_00]: My $3 million put me in an awkward position.
03:09.369 --> 03:11.734
[SPEAKER_00]: Too wealthy for standard advice.
03:11.714 --> 03:14.860
[SPEAKER_00]: and not wealthy enough for traditional family offices.
03:15.381 --> 03:18.728
[SPEAKER_00]: I was in a financial services desert.
03:19.028 --> 03:20.491
[SPEAKER_00]: So I became obsessed.
03:20.812 --> 03:28.346
[SPEAKER_00]: If I couldn't hire a family office, I was going to study how they operate and figure out what I could apply myself.
03:28.707 --> 03:32.895
[SPEAKER_00]: And what I discovered changed everything about how I think about wealth.
03:32.875 --> 03:38.947
[SPEAKER_00]: The ultra wealthy use a fundamentally different portfolio model than what everyone else has taught.
03:39.167 --> 03:40.770
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me show you the difference.
03:40.790 --> 03:43.977
[SPEAKER_00]: Most people are taught the drawdown portfolio model.
03:43.997 --> 03:44.818
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's how it works.
03:45.059 --> 03:48.285
[SPEAKER_00]: You accumulate assets during your working years.
03:48.265 --> 03:51.971
[SPEAKER_00]: stocks, index funds, maxing out your 401k.
03:52.652 --> 03:59.223
[SPEAKER_00]: Then when you retire, you start withdrawing 4% per year and hope that you don't run out of money before you die.
03:59.564 --> 04:06.996
[SPEAKER_00]: This model was created in the early 1990s for middle class Americans saving for retirements through 401k's.
04:07.376 --> 04:15.049
[SPEAKER_00]: It's fine if you have 30 years to accumulate and you're okay with retiring at 67 to live out a modest lifestyle in retirement.
04:15.029 --> 04:16.751
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's fine for the average person.
04:16.971 --> 04:28.424
[SPEAKER_00]: But if you're watching this and you're not the average person and you're not okay with hope as a strategy, the drawdown model leaves you vulnerable to a sequence of bad returns right when you retire.
04:28.704 --> 04:32.989
[SPEAKER_00]: A mathematical disaster that can wipe out decades of hard work.
04:33.009 --> 04:41.138
[SPEAKER_00]: So we need a portfolio structure that reduces our risk, generates income and still gives our portfolio growth opportunities.
04:41.118 --> 04:45.663
[SPEAKER_00]: the ultra wealthy use when I call an evergreen portfolio model.
04:45.683 --> 04:55.252
[SPEAKER_00]: Instead of just growth in preservation, they divide their assets into three specific categories with a clear job category one, growth assets.
04:55.833 --> 05:03.701
[SPEAKER_00]: These are assets designed to drive wealth accumulation through appreciation, think appreciating real estate in growth stocks.
05:03.721 --> 05:06.163
[SPEAKER_00]: Category two are income assets.
05:06.143 --> 05:10.727
[SPEAKER_00]: These generate cash flow now, reducing your dependency on active income.
05:10.907 --> 05:18.915
[SPEAKER_00]: A few examples are covered call ETFs, rental income, businesses, and real estate syndications to name a few.
05:19.235 --> 05:23.399
[SPEAKER_00]: And lastly, category three, capital preservation assets.
05:24.019 --> 05:26.722
[SPEAKER_00]: These protect against downside risk.
05:26.742 --> 05:31.646
[SPEAKER_00]: Think treasuries, municipal bonds, structured notes, and cash reserves.
05:31.947 --> 05:34.429
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's the genius of this model.
05:34.409 --> 05:45.889
[SPEAKER_00]: You stop treating your portfolio like a grain silo where you spend your entire career working to fill the silo, then the day you retire, you stop filling it and you start eating from it.
05:46.209 --> 05:48.273
[SPEAKER_00]: Every single meal, the pile gets smaller.
05:48.473 --> 05:53.201
[SPEAKER_00]: You spend your life praying the silo doesn't run empty before you do.
05:53.221 --> 05:57.569
[SPEAKER_00]: Instead, with the evergreen model, you treat your portfolio like an orchard.
05:57.769 --> 05:59.472
[SPEAKER_00]: You plant assets.
05:59.452 --> 06:00.955
[SPEAKER_00]: trees that produce fruit.
06:01.275 --> 06:03.400
[SPEAKER_00]: In every season, you harvest the fruit.
06:03.900 --> 06:04.862
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the income.
06:04.942 --> 06:06.946
[SPEAKER_00]: But you never chop down the trees.
06:07.487 --> 06:10.733
[SPEAKER_00]: Meaning you never sell the assets for income.
06:10.994 --> 06:16.003
[SPEAKER_00]: Your orchard grows, the harvest grows, and the assets lives forever.
06:16.384 --> 06:18.388
[SPEAKER_00]: This was my aha moment.
06:18.368 --> 06:21.913
[SPEAKER_00]: I realized I was using the wrong playbook for my goals.
06:22.314 --> 06:28.443
[SPEAKER_00]: So here's what I did, and this is the most important part, the thing that changed everything.
06:28.704 --> 06:30.787
[SPEAKER_00]: I created an investment thesis.
06:31.207 --> 06:39.179
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, if you've never heard this term, an investment thesis is basically your strategic plan for your portfolio.
06:39.500 --> 06:43.566
[SPEAKER_00]: It defines what you're trying to achieve, your risk tolerance,
06:43.546 --> 06:49.501
[SPEAKER_00]: which asset classes you'll invest in, how much goes into each category, what returns you're targeting.
06:49.782 --> 06:54.072
[SPEAKER_00]: Every single family office has one, and it's the foundation of everything they do.
06:54.694 --> 06:56.137
[SPEAKER_00]: And here's why it matters so much.
06:56.639 --> 06:58.804
[SPEAKER_00]: Without an investment thesis,
06:58.784 --> 07:00.306
[SPEAKER_00]: you're wandering aimlessly.
07:00.546 --> 07:03.290
[SPEAKER_00]: You see a hot stock tip, you throw some money at it.
07:03.831 --> 07:06.695
[SPEAKER_00]: Someone mentions real estate, you buy a rental property.
07:07.195 --> 07:10.560
[SPEAKER_00]: A friend is raising a fund, you invest because, foam on.
07:10.640 --> 07:17.189
[SPEAKER_00]: You're treating your most valuable asset, your portfolio, like a side project, inshooting from the hit.
07:17.209 --> 07:23.477
[SPEAKER_00]: And with millions in net worth, it should be treated with the same rigor in focus as your day job.
07:23.497 --> 07:26.361
[SPEAKER_00]: So I sat down and built my investment thesis.
07:26.341 --> 07:31.192
[SPEAKER_00]: I decided I wanted to replace my corporate income within five years.
07:31.473 --> 07:33.778
[SPEAKER_00]: I needed to reduce my concentration risk.
07:33.798 --> 07:37.486
[SPEAKER_00]: I also wanted exposure to private markets, not just public stocks.
07:37.787 --> 07:42.157
[SPEAKER_00]: I was willing to take calculated risk and growth while prioritizing income.
07:42.378 --> 07:45.244
[SPEAKER_00]: Then I looked at my current portfolio allocation.
07:45.224 --> 07:55.904
[SPEAKER_00]: Remember that 97% in a single stock, I was 97% in growth assets in 3% in capital preservation, zero income generation.
07:56.044 --> 07:57.948
[SPEAKER_00]: This was not aligned with my goals at all.
07:58.148 --> 08:02.136
[SPEAKER_00]: So I began a multi-year strategic divestiture in reallocation.
08:02.116 --> 08:08.282
[SPEAKER_00]: I was methodical about tax implications, market timing, and finding the right investment opportunities.
08:08.602 --> 08:12.085
[SPEAKER_00]: And after it was done, here's what my portfolio looked like.
08:12.105 --> 08:15.128
[SPEAKER_00]: I have 47.5% in growth assets.
08:15.609 --> 08:19.012
[SPEAKER_00]: Things like public equities in companies I understand.
08:19.332 --> 08:21.234
[SPEAKER_00]: Growth focused private equity funds.
08:21.574 --> 08:28.641
[SPEAKER_00]: In direct investments in early-stage companies, my target for these growth assets is to double every six to eight years.
08:28.961 --> 08:30.823
[SPEAKER_00]: Then income assets.
08:30.803 --> 08:32.547
[SPEAKER_00]: This was the biggest change.
08:32.788 --> 08:36.417
[SPEAKER_00]: I went from zero income focused assets to 47.5%.
08:37.099 --> 08:46.483
[SPEAKER_00]: These are things like real estate syndications, generating quarterly distributions, single-family properties that my wife manages.
08:46.463 --> 08:52.372
[SPEAKER_00]: covered call ETFs and private credit funds yielding 8 to 10 percent annually.
08:52.552 --> 08:59.442
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, lastly, I increased my capital preservation from 3 to 5 percent since I was leaving my corporate career.
08:59.742 --> 09:07.273
[SPEAKER_00]: These investments, along with some options trading that I do, generate over $200,000 per year in cash flow.
09:07.293 --> 09:11.239
[SPEAKER_00]: That's real money hitting my bank account, not paper gains.
09:11.219 --> 09:15.304
[SPEAKER_00]: dividends, distributions, rental income, interest payments.
09:15.604 --> 09:18.027
[SPEAKER_00]: In here's the part that most people find hard to believe.
09:18.248 --> 09:25.917
[SPEAKER_00]: While this portfolio has been generating all that cash, the principle has still grown by over $2 million in just the last few years.
09:26.377 --> 09:28.620
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the power of the Evergreen model.
09:28.921 --> 09:38.392
[SPEAKER_00]: The income assets throw off cash, the gross assets appreciate the preservation assets protect the downside and the whole system works together.
09:38.652 --> 09:39.994
[SPEAKER_00]: This isn't magic.
09:39.974 --> 09:41.837
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not some secret strategy.
09:42.418 --> 09:53.193
[SPEAKER_00]: It's simply how the ultra wealthy have been managing money for generations and it absolutely works at the $1 million to $30 million level if you have the right framework.
09:53.213 --> 09:59.302
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, I know what some of you might be thinking, Christopher, this sounds great, but I don't have your background.
09:59.482 --> 10:01.745
[SPEAKER_00]: I haven't studied family offices for years.
10:02.326 --> 10:03.768
[SPEAKER_00]: How am I supposed to do this?
10:04.089 --> 10:06.432
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's a fair question, because here's the truth.
10:06.853 --> 10:09.036
[SPEAKER_00]: This isn't just my personal story,
10:09.016 --> 10:11.498
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a system you can replicate.
10:11.859 --> 10:16.303
[SPEAKER_00]: After I transform my own portfolio, I started helping others do the same thing.
10:16.523 --> 10:22.189
[SPEAKER_00]: And what I realize is that you don't need a hundred million dollars to operate like a family office.
10:22.729 --> 10:24.551
[SPEAKER_00]: You just need the right framework.
10:24.571 --> 10:27.494
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's why I created the micro family office system.
10:27.974 --> 10:36.863
[SPEAKER_00]: It's specifically designed for people managing one to 30 million dollars in net worth who want income today, growth tomorrow,
10:36.843 --> 10:39.929
[SPEAKER_00]: in a wealth business that can be passed down for generations.
10:40.310 --> 10:46.283
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, every few weeks, I host a free workshop where I break down exactly how this works.
10:46.703 --> 10:51.213
[SPEAKER_00]: We cover how to build your investment thesis from scratch.
10:51.233 --> 10:54.700
[SPEAKER_00]: A deep dive into draw-down versus evergreen models.
10:54.680 --> 11:05.032
[SPEAKER_00]: how to assign every dollar in your portfolio a specific job, growth, income, or preservation, a simple system that you can implement yourself.
11:05.152 --> 11:08.336
[SPEAKER_00]: By the end of the workshop, you will have a clear blueprint.
11:08.837 --> 11:15.024
[SPEAKER_00]: Not a theory, not big advice, an actual plan that you can start executing immediately.
11:15.204 --> 11:23.674
[SPEAKER_00]: If you're sitting on company stock, if you recently had a liquidity event, if you're tired of treating millions like a side project,
11:23.654 --> 11:26.878
[SPEAKER_00]: this workshop will change how you think about your wealth.
11:26.898 --> 11:31.865
[SPEAKER_00]: If you're ready, head over to wealthops.io or click the link below this video.
11:32.085 --> 11:37.212
[SPEAKER_00]: Chances are, if you're watching this, we have a workshop coming up in just a few days.
11:37.573 --> 11:38.534
[SPEAKER_00]: I hope to see you there.
11:38.795 --> 11:47.907
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, in the meantime, you can check out this video to learn more about how the evergreen portfolio fits into the micro family office structure.
00:00.031 --> 00:05.077
[SPEAKER_00]: In 2012, 97% of my net worth was tied up in a single stock.
00:05.237 --> 00:08.461
[SPEAKER_00]: When the market was up, I felt like a financial genius.
00:08.721 --> 00:12.846
[SPEAKER_00]: But when it was at all time, lows, my anxiety was at an all-time high.
00:13.246 --> 00:15.208
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a ticking time bomb.
00:15.228 --> 00:26.241
[SPEAKER_00]: I knew something had to change, but it seemed next to impossible to find somebody who understood my goals and had the experience working with people at my portfolio size.
00:26.221 --> 00:39.040
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, financial advisors kept feeding me cookie-cutter advice, and on the other side, family offices required a hundred million dollar minimums that I didn't have, so I started digging deeper for another path.
00:39.060 --> 00:44.668
[SPEAKER_00]: That's when I discovered what ultra wealthy families actually do differently and it changed everything.
00:44.909 --> 00:53.241
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm Christopher Nelson, and today, my portfolio generates over
00:53.221 --> 00:54.262
[SPEAKER_00]: each and every year.
00:54.623 --> 00:58.267
[SPEAKER_00]: In today's video, I'm going to share how you can do the same.
00:58.287 --> 01:00.509
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me take you back to that moment in 2012.
01:00.689 --> 01:04.413
[SPEAKER_00]: I just gone through my first IPO at Splunk.
01:04.433 --> 01:14.264
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm sitting there watching the NASDAQ screen with my colleagues and our stock price jumps from 17 to 34 in the first few minutes of trading.
01:14.505 --> 01:17.608
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, I had expected to make about 1.5 million.
01:17.588 --> 01:21.031
[SPEAKER_00]: I ended up with $3.3 million dollars.
01:21.372 --> 01:24.495
[SPEAKER_00]: It's sort of melt your mind when something like that happens.
01:24.515 --> 01:28.399
[SPEAKER_00]: But here's the side that no one shares with you about sudden wealth.
01:28.679 --> 01:30.701
[SPEAKER_00]: I had a six month lock-out period.
01:31.281 --> 01:32.663
[SPEAKER_00]: My wife wanted to buy a house.
01:33.083 --> 01:34.585
[SPEAKER_00]: She was pregnant with her first son.
01:34.845 --> 01:40.330
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm sitting on this concentrated position that could evaporate just as fast as it appeared.
01:40.651 --> 01:43.073
[SPEAKER_00]: So, I do what you're supposed to do.
01:43.053 --> 01:54.405
[SPEAKER_00]: I called financial advisors and you know what, every single one of them told me, diversify into a 60, 40 portfolio of index funds and bonds and withdraw 4% a year when you retire.
01:54.626 --> 01:55.408
[SPEAKER_00]: The problem?
01:56.148 --> 01:57.190
[SPEAKER_00]: that wasn't my goal.
01:57.510 --> 02:03.399
[SPEAKER_00]: I wanted to exit the rat race early and their solution gave me no income replacement strategy.
02:03.579 --> 02:06.303
[SPEAKER_00]: And frankly, I was part of the problem as well.
02:06.584 --> 02:11.711
[SPEAKER_00]: I had been treating my biggest asset, my portfolio, like a side project.
02:11.992 --> 02:16.198
[SPEAKER_00]: So I dove deeper into studying how family offices actually operate.
02:16.178 --> 02:19.703
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, if you aren't familiar with the family office concept, picture this.
02:20.024 --> 02:25.071
[SPEAKER_00]: When you have a hundred million dollars or more, you don't just call the financial advisor at Maryland.
02:25.431 --> 02:33.343
[SPEAKER_00]: You build your own private company with a full staff, investment managers, tax strategist, estate attorneys, accountants.
02:33.323 --> 02:39.694
[SPEAKER_00]: all focused exclusively on growing and protecting your family's wealth across generations.
02:40.014 --> 02:41.517
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a family office.
02:41.777 --> 02:49.290
[SPEAKER_00]: It's treating wealth management as a serious business operation, not a side conversation with an advisor once a quarter.
02:49.270 --> 02:56.865
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, while I was getting a behind-the-scenes education on how family offices operate, I discovered something fascinating.
02:57.105 --> 03:01.815
[SPEAKER_00]: They weren't following the advice my financial advisors were giving me at all.
03:02.195 --> 03:06.163
[SPEAKER_00]: I quickly realized they were operating on a completely different playbook.
03:06.384 --> 03:09.209
[SPEAKER_00]: My $3 million put me in an awkward position.
03:09.369 --> 03:11.734
[SPEAKER_00]: Too wealthy for standard advice.
03:11.714 --> 03:14.860
[SPEAKER_00]: and not wealthy enough for traditional family offices.
03:15.381 --> 03:18.728
[SPEAKER_00]: I was in a financial services desert.
03:19.028 --> 03:20.491
[SPEAKER_00]: So I became obsessed.
03:20.812 --> 03:28.346
[SPEAKER_00]: If I couldn't hire a family office, I was going to study how they operate and figure out what I could apply myself.
03:28.707 --> 03:32.895
[SPEAKER_00]: And what I discovered changed everything about how I think about wealth.
03:32.875 --> 03:38.947
[SPEAKER_00]: The ultra wealthy use a fundamentally different portfolio model than what everyone else has taught.
03:39.167 --> 03:40.770
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me show you the difference.
03:40.790 --> 03:43.977
[SPEAKER_00]: Most people are taught the drawdown portfolio model.
03:43.997 --> 03:44.818
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's how it works.
03:45.059 --> 03:48.285
[SPEAKER_00]: You accumulate assets during your working years.
03:48.265 --> 03:51.971
[SPEAKER_00]: stocks, index funds, maxing out your 401k.
03:52.652 --> 03:59.223
[SPEAKER_00]: Then when you retire, you start withdrawing 4% per year and hope that you don't run out of money before you die.
03:59.564 --> 04:06.996
[SPEAKER_00]: This model was created in the early 1990s for middle class Americans saving for retirements through 401k's.
04:07.376 --> 04:15.049
[SPEAKER_00]: It's fine if you have 30 years to accumulate and you're okay with retiring at 67 to live out a modest lifestyle in retirement.
04:15.029 --> 04:16.751
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's fine for the average person.
04:16.971 --> 04:28.424
[SPEAKER_00]: But if you're watching this and you're not the average person and you're not okay with hope as a strategy, the drawdown model leaves you vulnerable to a sequence of bad returns right when you retire.
04:28.704 --> 04:32.989
[SPEAKER_00]: A mathematical disaster that can wipe out decades of hard work.
04:33.009 --> 04:41.138
[SPEAKER_00]: So we need a portfolio structure that reduces our risk, generates income and still gives our portfolio growth opportunities.
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[SPEAKER_00]: the ultra wealthy use when I call an evergreen portfolio model.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Instead of just growth in preservation, they divide their assets into three specific categories with a clear job category one, growth assets.
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[SPEAKER_00]: These are assets designed to drive wealth accumulation through appreciation, think appreciating real estate in growth stocks.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Category two are income assets.
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[SPEAKER_00]: These generate cash flow now, reducing your dependency on active income.
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[SPEAKER_00]: A few examples are covered call ETFs, rental income, businesses, and real estate syndications to name a few.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And lastly, category three, capital preservation assets.
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[SPEAKER_00]: These protect against downside risk.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Think treasuries, municipal bonds, structured notes, and cash reserves.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Here's the genius of this model.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You stop treating your portfolio like a grain silo where you spend your entire career working to fill the silo, then the day you retire, you stop filling it and you start eating from it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Every single meal, the pile gets smaller.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You spend your life praying the silo doesn't run empty before you do.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Instead, with the evergreen model, you treat your portfolio like an orchard.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You plant assets.
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[SPEAKER_00]: trees that produce fruit.
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[SPEAKER_00]: In every season, you harvest the fruit.
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[SPEAKER_00]: That's the income.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But you never chop down the trees.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Meaning you never sell the assets for income.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Your orchard grows, the harvest grows, and the assets lives forever.
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[SPEAKER_00]: This was my aha moment.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I realized I was using the wrong playbook for my goals.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So here's what I did, and this is the most important part, the thing that changed everything.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I created an investment thesis.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Now, if you've never heard this term, an investment thesis is basically your strategic plan for your portfolio.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It defines what you're trying to achieve, your risk tolerance,
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[SPEAKER_00]: which asset classes you'll invest in, how much goes into each category, what returns you're targeting.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Every single family office has one, and it's the foundation of everything they do.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And here's why it matters so much.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Without an investment thesis,
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[SPEAKER_00]: you're wandering aimlessly.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You see a hot stock tip, you throw some money at it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Someone mentions real estate, you buy a rental property.
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[SPEAKER_00]: A friend is raising a fund, you invest because, foam on.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You're treating your most valuable asset, your portfolio, like a side project, inshooting from the hit.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And with millions in net worth, it should be treated with the same rigor in focus as your day job.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So I sat down and built my investment thesis.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I decided I wanted to replace my corporate income within five years.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I needed to reduce my concentration risk.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I also wanted exposure to private markets, not just public stocks.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I was willing to take calculated risk and growth while prioritizing income.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Then I looked at my current portfolio allocation.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Remember that 97% in a single stock, I was 97% in growth assets in 3% in capital preservation, zero income generation.
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[SPEAKER_00]: This was not aligned with my goals at all.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So I began a multi-year strategic divestiture in reallocation.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I was methodical about tax implications, market timing, and finding the right investment opportunities.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And after it was done, here's what my portfolio looked like.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I have 47.5% in growth assets.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Things like public equities in companies I understand.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Growth focused private equity funds.
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[SPEAKER_00]: In direct investments in early-stage companies, my target for these growth assets is to double every six to eight years.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Then income assets.
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[SPEAKER_00]: This was the biggest change.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I went from zero income focused assets to 47.5%.
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[SPEAKER_00]: These are things like real estate syndications, generating quarterly distributions, single-family properties that my wife manages.
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[SPEAKER_00]: covered call ETFs and private credit funds yielding 8 to 10 percent annually.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Now, lastly, I increased my capital preservation from 3 to 5 percent since I was leaving my corporate career.
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[SPEAKER_00]: These investments, along with some options trading that I do, generate over $200,000 per year in cash flow.
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[SPEAKER_00]: That's real money hitting my bank account, not paper gains.
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[SPEAKER_00]: dividends, distributions, rental income, interest payments.
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[SPEAKER_00]: In here's the part that most people find hard to believe.
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[SPEAKER_00]: While this portfolio has been generating all that cash, the principle has still grown by over $2 million in just the last few years.
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[SPEAKER_00]: That's the power of the Evergreen model.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The income assets throw off cash, the gross assets appreciate the preservation assets protect the downside and the whole system works together.
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[SPEAKER_00]: This isn't magic.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's not some secret strategy.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's simply how the ultra wealthy have been managing money for generations and it absolutely works at the $1 million to $30 million level if you have the right framework.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Now, I know what some of you might be thinking, Christopher, this sounds great, but I don't have your background.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I haven't studied family offices for years.
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[SPEAKER_00]: How am I supposed to do this?
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[SPEAKER_00]: And that's a fair question, because here's the truth.
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[SPEAKER_00]: This isn't just my personal story,
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[SPEAKER_00]: This is a system you can replicate.
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[SPEAKER_00]: After I transform my own portfolio, I started helping others do the same thing.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And what I realize is that you don't need a hundred million dollars to operate like a family office.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You just need the right framework.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And that's why I created the micro family office system.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's specifically designed for people managing one to 30 million dollars in net worth who want income today, growth tomorrow,
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[SPEAKER_00]: in a wealth business that can be passed down for generations.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Now, every few weeks, I host a free workshop where I break down exactly how this works.
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[SPEAKER_00]: We cover how to build your investment thesis from scratch.
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[SPEAKER_00]: A deep dive into draw-down versus evergreen models.
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[SPEAKER_00]: how to assign every dollar in your portfolio a specific job, growth, income, or preservation, a simple system that you can implement yourself.
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[SPEAKER_00]: By the end of the workshop, you will have a clear blueprint.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Not a theory, not big advice, an actual plan that you can start executing immediately.
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[SPEAKER_00]: If you're sitting on company stock, if you recently had a liquidity event, if you're tired of treating millions like a side project,
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[SPEAKER_00]: this workshop will change how you think about your wealth.
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[SPEAKER_00]: If you're ready, head over to wealthops.io or click the link below this video.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Chances are, if you're watching this, we have a workshop coming up in just a few days.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I hope to see you there.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Now, in the meantime, you can check out this video to learn more about how the evergreen portfolio fits into the micro family office structure.
