If you're like most American families who try to keep yourselves organized, you may have an office in your home where dad might keep up with the mortgage and credit card bills while mom keeps the local coupons and kids have a dedicated cubby hole where they frequently need those permission slips signed for school. The office is surely complete with some type of computer and an ink jet printer that's regularly out of that weird Magna color where you can't just buy one color but you're forced to get the entire cartridge and complain about the $40 price. It's ok, we've all been there but you're just trying to do big things and maintain the office for your family. If that sounds likes your start to 2012, you're certainly headed in the right direction organizing your family but that's not quite the office I'm talking about. There are billion dollar differences in an office for your family and a Family Office. Gather around my friends, it's story telling time.
Let's say my friend Aaron who loves to work out decides to one day own a boxing gym. He gathers together The Investment Forum and before long he's off and running. Through vast political connections and a stroke of luck, his gyms take off and up pops another and another and another. Twenty years later, Aaron's Global Boxing has 250 locations worldwide and he's worth $200 million. Go Aaron! To keep Aaron's family organized he also has a family office but his operates a little differently. First, it's not in his house but perhaps in a Class A office space with the words "No Solicitation" on the door. In it he has a super smart tax attorney who has a CPA, CFA, CFP and law degree who's busily hiding millions from the IRS in what we carefully call tax avoidance, not tax evasion. His personal financial statement is a complex spreadsheet with many interlocking subsidiaries, holding companies and layers upon layers of complex gobbledygook. When he needs a new car, there's no haggling at the local dealership for six hours.
Instead, he negotiates wholesale for a fleet of 25 Ford Explorers where Aaron Jr.'s Mustang is on the house. When his nephew gets sick, he doesn't wonder if he has Palmetto Health insurance, Aetna or Blue Cross Blue Shield, he simply calls one of his aunts who remind him that the family has Aaron Global PPO with no co-pay and unlimited benefits. Aaron Jr. won't wonder which college to go to because he's already been recruited by the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton school where he'll meet Donald Trump Jr. Together they will study with a well read goat herder named Hakeem from Zamunda. "When I tell you the boy's got his own money, the boy's got his own money!", yes that Hakeem from Coming to America. They chose Wharton because of its formal Global Family Office program which ensures that the mega rich with Family Offices stick closely together. All the applications will be completed not in the office for the family, but the Family Office. On three, everybody, how does the rich stay rich? Keep it in the F-A-M-I-L-Y!!!
It all sounds pretty neat but I bring it up for a reason. Recently, during a round of introductions, I overheard a colleague say they were from Ft. Lauderdale. To the average ear, you may think oh yeah that place in Florida but because I've visited that area on a home buying tour a few years ago, I thought I'd mention my visit to him for familiarity's sake. It just so happens that the house I visited was in front of NFL legend Dan Marino's house but I didn't recall the name of the community and could barely remember Dan Marino's name to be honest but because one of my new favorite areas is San Marino, California I was able to muster it out. Fortunately, I didn't have to remember the name of the community because he did and went on to tell me that his parents live next door. Further conversation revealed he was trying to gain acceptance into a program at Tsinghua University in what his parents thought would be very important for his success. It just so happens that this is the same Beijing program I was accepted in during the 2009 fall season. At that point, I asked him where they docked, as in the boat, because if you live in Ft. Lauderdale, the yacht capital of the world, and you send your kids to school in China, you more than likely have a yacht, which they did! After he mentioned that, we shared global laughs and had a really swell time talking about his family's business and mutual acquaintances in Coral Gables and Weston which again may not mean anything to the naked ear.
There are buzz words out there on the road to success which may be as simple as names and places and if you don't recognize them you'll miss tremendous opportunities. Success will pass you by like a fleet of ships in broad daylight. Something as simple as a raised brow on a familiar concept will open a dead bolted, thousand pound, four- inch steel door that a bulldozer couldn't knock down full speed but only if you respond to right words. If you overhear someone say office for the family and Family Office, know that the order of those words could mean the difference between hopelessly trying to find answers to a puzzling question and the invitation to board Aaron's private jet. I'm not telling anyone to go snooping around listening for the words family office or suggesting you sneak through people's trashcan for Family Office documents as there are people who are paid handsomely to do that already but that's another story.
The road to success is a dark frequently winding uphill, unchartered mud path with no warning signs and lots of potholes leaving you, the map-less wanderer, left with more questions than answers. This is just a smidgeon of information that is delivered with hopes that it doesn't fall on deaf ears but instead perky earlobes standing between you and a 2012 success like you've never heard of (no pun intended whatever that phrase means). I'd love to stay and chat more but brunch times-a-brewing in sunny South Florida and IHOP isn't where the Muckety-Mucks are dining today. You'll find them at The International Polo Club cheering on their favorite Argentinean who dominates the sport and only plays for blank checkbook(s). Pancakes today are $27.50 which is a bit pricey but not unaffordable by any means. I wonder if I can find a pair of those skinny little binoculars that the the ritzy wives hold with the stick thingy on the side while helplessly starring and really have no clue what they're looking at. Nah, I'd probably be better off figuring out if I can make everyone at the table turn in disbelief if instead of asking for the Al Fruit I yell, "Wouldja please pass the jelly?" You know, you can educate a man, but some of us you just take Nowhere! She's your q-u-e-e-e-n to b-e-e-e-e-e...
Sincerely 
