SpaceX is about to mint 160 new millionaires — and most of them will get this wrong

You think the big decisions come after the money hits. You're wrong — and that misunderstanding is what costs first-generation wealth builders the most.

A tweet stopped me cold this week. Roughly 160 people in Austin are about to clear $100 million from the upcoming SpaceX IPO. Twelve will clear a billion. I cleared $3 million on my first IPO. I made almost every mistake a first-gen wealth builder can make — and most of these SpaceX employees are about to make them too.

Here's what nobody tells you: the highest-leverage moves happen before the stock even prices. The first call most people make is the wrong one. The lockout window most people sleep through is the most important planning period of their financial life.

I walk through 7 decisions you need to make if you're staring down an IPO, a business sale, an inheritance, or any sudden wealth event.

There's also one question underneath all seven. If you can't answer it, none of the rest works.

Let's keep building.

I Retired at 51 Without Following the 4% Rule

Most people are handed the same retirement playbook: hire an advisor, diversify your stocks, withdraw 4% a year, and hope the market cooperates.

I followed none of it. And I walked away at 51.

Here's the part nobody tells you — that playbook wasn't built for early retirement, tax efficiency, durable income, or leaving a legacy. It was built to help you accumulate wealth. Not to live from it.

The real shift came when I stopped studying retirement advice and started studying how ultra-high-net-worth families — the ones managing $100M+ — actually operate their money. They weren't asking how to beat the market. They were asking completely different questions.

In this video, I'm walking you through the 5 counter-intuitive principles that changed everything for me — including the $10K decision that's quietly worth over $650K, and why the org chart most people use to manage their wealth is upside down.

If you've built real wealth and the conventional model feels like it wasn't built for you — you're right. Here's what to do instead.

Most first-gen millionaires I meet have a portfolio that looks the way mine did 14 years ago — over-concentrated in growth stocks. That works when markets are ripping. It breaks the moment you actually need the portfolio to pay you.

I've spent the last decade building an income portfolio that now generates around $200K per year in tax-efficient income across multiple asset types. Along the way I've evaluated every income vehicle on the menu — and the ones getting pushed hardest on YouTube aren't the ones I'd actually recommend.

In this video I rank all 15 income investments S through F for a specific situation: $5M, five years from retirement, growth-stock background, semi-liquid preference. A few of the "obvious" picks land much lower than you'd expect. One vehicle most investors overlook turns out to be the cleanest on-ramp on the entire list.

If you're trying to make the shift from money maker to money manager, this is the map.

Let's keep building.

If your wealth feels disorganized, it's not because you've made bad investments. It's because nobody ever taught you the part that actually matters once you've made the money.

Every book, every podcast, every advisor obsesses over the same question — where should I put my money? But that's the wrong question at this stage. The wealthiest families in the world figured this out generations ago. They don't run their wealth like a portfolio. They run it like a business. It's called a family office, and the most famous one has been operating for over 140 years.

Here's the catch — traditional family offices need $100M+ to run. So I scaled the model down. Same architecture. Same operating components. Built for $1M to $30M. I call it the Micro Family Office.

In this video, I walk through the components every family office is built on — the same ones that will run yours. Watch this before you make another investment decision.

For the past five years, my portfolio has generated over $200,000 a year in income — and until recently, none of it came from covered call ETFs. That changed. As I went deep into the research — comparing strategies, breaking down tax structures, evaluating funds — I found two things: these are some of the most interesting income vehicles available right now, and they are deeply misunderstood.

Most investors buying these funds see a headline yield and assume that's what they're keeping. It isn't. The strategy a fund uses can matter more than the yield it advertises — and the difference between the right pick and the wrong one isn't a few percentage points. It's whether your principal is compounding or quietly being handed back to you in monthly checks dressed up as income.

By the end of this video, you'll know how to spot the trap, what metric actually tells you what you keep, and the single decision that can save high earners thousands a year on the exact same funds.

This is education, not advice. Let's keep building.

You crossed the million-dollar mark. The returns look good. Your advisor says you're on track. And yet, something still feels off.

I've been there. After my first IPO, I sat down with Morgan Stanley and they handed me a cookie-cutter 60/40 — the same allocation they'd give anyone walking through the door. That's when it hit me: nobody is coming to save me.

The gap between where you are and where you should be has nothing to do with picking better stocks or chasing the next deal. It has everything to do with how you operate.

In this video, I'm walking through three shifts I made when I stopped just "investing" and started running my wealth like a business. These aren't advanced financial strategies. They're operational. And once you see them, you can't unsee them.

If you're managing $1M to $30M and the financial anxiety hasn't gone away — this one is for you.

Let's keep building.

Most high-net-worth portfolios look great on paper — and generate almost nothing in monthly income. Not because the assets are bad. Because they were never architected for that purpose.

I spent years learning this the hard way. My first income deployment was about $530K across a handful of real estate vehicles. It worked — but I made three critical mistakes that I see nearly every investor repeat. One of them almost cost me the entire foundation I was trying to build.

In this video, I break down exactly how a $3.5M income allocation can be structured inside a $7M portfolio to generate $25,000 a month — the tiers, the vehicles, the dollar amounts. I walk through my own first deployment, what the returns actually looked like, and the three mistakes that quietly kill income architecture before it ever gets off the ground.

If you’re sitting on a well-funded portfolio and wondering why it doesn’t pay you yet — this is the video that changes how you think about it.

Let’s keep building.

You've probably seen the headlines: family offices cost $500K, $2M, even $3M a year to operate. If that made you write off the whole idea — I get it. I would have too.

But those numbers only tell part of the story.

I've been operating my own family office for five years, and in this video I'm breaking down exactly what it costs to run one for households in the $1M to $30M investable net worth range. Not theoretical costs. The actual numbers — including what I personally spent in 2025.

I walk through the three types of family offices, why most people only ever hear about the most expensive one, and the lesser-known model that applies the same institutional framework at a fraction of the price.

But the real twist isn't the gross cost — it's what happens when you run the net cost math. I share a real example from my own finances that completely flips the expense conversation on its head. The number surprised me, and I think it'll surprise you too.

If you've ever wondered whether serious wealth infrastructure is actually within reach, this video answers the question with real numbers — and a framework most people in your position have never considered.