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Successful entrepreneurs build sophisticated systems to run their businesses—but many have no operating system for managing their family’s wealth.
In this episode, Dave Wolcott sits down with M.C. Laubscher to explore the ideas behind his new book, The Family Office for Business Owners. They discuss how entrepreneurs can apply family office principles to coordinate advisors, protect wealth, establish investment guardrails, create generational governance, and build a family wealth system designed to last.
In This Episode
- How to build a family wealth operating system instead of relying on disconnected financial advisors
- The five pillars family offices use to protect, manage, and transfer wealth across generations
- Why architecture, coordination, and governance can matter more than simply chasing higher investment returns
M.C. Laubscher is an entrepreneur, investor, founder of Producers Wealth, and author of Get Wealthy for Sure and The Family Office for Business Owners. After nearly two decades studying, consulting with, and learning from family offices, M.C. developed a framework designed to help business owners build a family wealth system with the same intentionality they bring to their businesses.
This episode covers family office investing, wealth strategy, generational wealth, financial freedom, alternative investments, family governance, investment policy statements, risk management, tax strategy, asset management, entrepreneurship, passive income, and wealth building strategies for business owners and accredited investors.
Is everything smooth sailing? Absolutely not. Can we learn lessons from things that didn’t go quite the way we wanted them to? Absolutely, and that’s experience. And then I’ve got to figure out what other experiences I need to go through to get to the next level, the next better version of myself.
How’s it going, everyone? Welcome to another episode of Wealth Strategy Secrets. What if the biggest risk to your wealth isn’t a bad investment, but the absence of a system connecting it all? Most successful entrepreneurs run their business with clear strategies, processes, and accountability, yet their family wealth is often fragmented across investments, entities, and advisors who rarely communicate. Today, MC Longshore, author of The Family Office for Business Owners, reveals how to apply the same principles used by ultra-wealthy families to create a coordinated wealth operating system, one designed to protect your assets, improve decision-making, and build a legacy that lasts for generations. MC, welcome to the show.
Dave, fantastic to be back. I’ve been looking forward to our conversation, I always enjoy spending time with you.
Yeah, 100% agree, and I think this is going to be very illuminating for the audience, as always. First of all, kudos on writing your second book, you’re really becoming quite the author. I want to talk about that today, because I think you’ve gathered some amazing insights through all the conversations you’ve had, understanding the ecosystem around building wealth, especially from an alternative lens, something different and contrarian to the traditional investing that Wall Street preaches. So you have a lot of unique insights there. Let’s start with why you wrote the book, before we jump into some of the lessons and takeaways. Having written a book myself, I know it’s a massive undertaking, so what prompted the second one?
It’s interesting. As you know, the book process is quite grueling, and after the first one I remember thinking, “I don’t know if I’d do another one.” But the message we’ll talk about today just became stronger and stronger, and I saw how valuable it was to a lot of people. I actually gave a talk on the topic, the book title is The Family Office for Business Owners, and it started as a presentation, a keynote I gave at an event. Afterward, a handful of people came up to me and said, “Hey, is this in your first book, Get Wealthy for Sure?” I said no, it’s not in there. And they said, “Well, you should write a book about this.” After enough people brought it up, I figured it was probably something I should pursue.
Having the experience of the first book, this one was a little smoother. But Dave, I’m blessed to have incredible conversations with entrepreneurs and business owners in all 50 states, Producers Wealth serves business owners and their families in all 50 states, plus Puerto Rico, since there’s a lot of family offices there. Sometimes a concept is one you’re exposed to over and over, but one day it just hits you. I had a conversation with another business owner, very successful, and it occurred to me: business owners run their business like a CEO. It’s a well-oiled machine with systems and processes. There’s one document where everything you need to know lives, one source of truth. There are decision-making frameworks; everybody knows who has ownership over what, who gets to make decisions on what, especially in a self-managing company. And yet when it comes to the wealth of their family, they have nothing in place. I use the analogy that they run their family’s wealth like a W-2 employee, but run their business like a business.
It’s fascinating, because as a business owner, especially a successful one, you have an operating system for your business that takes $1 and turns it into $10, just through the systems in place. Yet when it comes to the family’s wealth, there’s no architecture, no coordination. The average business owner gets advice from eight to ten people just for their business, and then a little bit more for their wealth. Most of the time, everybody’s in their own lane, solving for something different: a tax professional is solving for tax efficiency, a legal professional is solving for legal-framework efficiency, an insurance professional is solving for insurance efficiency, and so on. They’re all in different lanes, different silos, not coordinated at all, and a lot of the advice conflicts. There’s no system, no architecture, no coordination, and no one’s on the same page.
The other thing that really stood out, I actually asked this same business owner: if you disappeared for 30 days from your business today, what would happen? I’m not talking about passing away or becoming disabled, just disappearing. His response was very confident: “Oh, we’ve got a well-oiled machine. We’ve got systems in place, we have leaders, there’s accountability, everybody knows who owns what and who makes decisions on what. It’ll just keep moving, it’s a self-managing company.” So I said, “Okay, let’s take that same question to your family. What happens if you disappear for 30 days from the wealth of your family? Does your spouse and children know what’s there, what accounts exist, how to access them, the passwords? Do they know who to call, who your most trusted advisors are, who the financial advisor is, who the insurance professional is? Would they know where the documents are? Do they even know what exists, what trusts, what entities?” We could go on and on about it. It was almost bleak, and he said, “Wow, I see what you mean now about not having a system in place.”
That’s why I took on the challenge of book number two, I thought the message was powerful, because I kept seeing the same problem more and more with business owners. And when you look at a family operating system, where else to look but family offices? These families have it figured out. In fact, right around the time of this recording, EY (formerly Ernst & Young) published a report on capital under control: today, there’s more capital under control within private family offices than in private equity and venture capital combined. So if you look at who’s playing the game with proper systems in place, who better to learn from than family offices?
Couldn’t agree more. For us, after talking to thousands of different investors, the number one problem we’ve consistently seen is not having a comprehensive system. The number two challenge is a lack of coordination between all their advisors. To give the listeners some context: I think part of this is also an education and mindset gap. Most of us grew up thinking wealth meant investing in the stock market, investing in 401(k)s, and having a financial advisor. A family office, though, was something you couldn’t access until you had nine figures of net worth, and frankly, every family office out there is unique and does its own thing. But the takeaway is that these family offices have structured things in a great way: they’ve built systems, processes, good governance around how everything works, and an end-to-end strategy. For the audience, if your net worth is $1 million, $10 million, or $50 million, you can still leverage a lot of this thinking and solve for the same things. If you can create that full system, that full coordination among advisors, you’re going to be so much better off.
It’s incredible, the difference in mindset. Going back to your first point, how we grew up, what we were exposed to, we were always taught to think about rate of return. If you talk to investors today, the first question they ask is, “So what’s my rate of return? How much am I going to get back?” But family offices think differently: proper architecture is more important than rate of return, because you could have a great rate of return, but then what’s your tax liability? How exposed are you to lawsuits, creditors, financial predators? We could go on down that checklist, architecture matters more than just the rate of return.
The other thing is the accumulation game, this vision we’re sold, which is great marketing: “We’re just going to accumulate as much as we can, and eventually, when we’re ready to retire”, which I know you and I don’t really believe in as a concept, but let’s play along, “there’ll be a mountain of stuff, money, assets to leverage for retirement.” But without coordination and architecture, you could have a mountain of money, and how much of it is actually yours? You could lose half of it or more through overlapping taxes, coverages, services, insurance, and lawsuits, “Oh, I thought I was protected because my CPA recommended this entity, but my legal person didn’t coordinate with them, and now I got cleaned out in a lawsuit I didn’t even do anything wrong to deserve.”
Then there’s strategy, again, this is how the framing is done for us: rate of return, accumulate stuff. You end up adopting a strategy you don’t even really understand, the strategy someone else wants you to adopt. More strategic thinking looks like: if I make a decision in this area, it could affect me negatively in another area. I might pursue an investment with a higher rate of return when another investment, with better tax treatment, would have served my overall strategy much better. Going back to the business example, you and I both know that in business, you can do something in one area without thinking about how it affects another area, and it always comes back to bite you: “I moved money from this area to that area, I thought that was good, and now there’s a problem over there.” Everything is connected when it comes to a wealth strategy, but the majority of people still don’t know that. I think that’s the mindset shift in family offices, it’s a lens. You don’t need $100 million to do what these family offices do; it’s a mindset shift, looking at the world and your wealth completely differently. There are other lenses too, stewardship, preservation, calculated risk, governance, legacy. It’s just a more holistic approach to wealth, which I know we’re both fans of.
I love that, so many good points there. One of the ways we’ve been working with clients is to instantiate that through creating an investment policy statement, so you end up with this financial doctrine, or financial constitution, to manage your family and do things like create guardrails. For instance, a guardrail might say, “I’m never going to have more than 30% of my portfolio allocated to any one asset class,” no matter how bullish you are on real estate or crypto or whatever it might be. You create these guardrails together with your family, sitting down with your spouse and saying, “I just don’t feel comfortable with that, there’s a certain amount of risk we’re not taking on.” Now you have a doctrine you can execute by, an actual plan.
And on coordination, to give the audience another example of why it’s so important: we’ve seen a CPA provide a great tax strategy that saves money on taxes, but introduces all this additional risk you hadn’t even considered, say, by recommending a land easement investment that’s now under scrutiny, adding exposure that undermines your entire risk-management strategy. So comprehensive coordination among advisors, a clear strategy, and implementing guardrails to actually execute that plan, that’s how you actually realize the gains.
Those are the important things. In the book, I lay out five pillars, which I’ve developed after studying family offices for nearly two decades, we’ve done consulting through my company, helped families and family offices, worked with virtual family offices, and looked at many different families and what they do. That’s how I came up with this framework. And to your point, most of these pillars cost you time rather than money.
The first pillar is legacy assets, the values of your family. Sit around the dinner table and figure out who you are, what’s important to you, what you stand for, what you stand against, how you want to operate as a family, what values you live by. If someone who knows you saw how your family operates, what would they say about you? That’s just a conversation around the dinner table, but you can codify it into symbols. My family built a crest, had fun with it, to represent our family values, and we display it in different places around the house as a reminder, just as logos, branding, and taglines matter for companies, the same is true for your family. It’s a way of reinforcing your beliefs, and eventually it translates into habits. How you live, and the rhythms in your household, create the family’s culture, just like in a business. This is the hardest part, honestly, because once you’ve established the culture, you can codify it in documents so you can pass those values and that culture on to your children and grandchildren.
That’s your family statement of purpose, think of the Declaration of Independence. We’re celebrating its 250th year in the United States this year, and it’s a statement of purpose: this is why we’re forming our own country. You could do the same thing for your family in whatever year you write it. That’s your statement of purpose, your why. Then there’s the family constitution: just as the founders of the United States wrote a constitution for how the country would operate, you can write one for your family, including a 100-year vision for what your family looks like, and your investment philosophy.
Heirlooms matter too, we’re all unique, we all have stories, we all come from different places, we all have lessons we’ve learned. There are stories and heirlooms in our families that add to our culture, to who we are and where we come from. Then there’s the legacy library: if you have lessons to teach your children and grandchildren, it’s never been easier, grab a smartphone, hit record, and say, “Here’s a story I want to share with my children and grandchildren.” Upload it to the cloud along with any other lessons, articles you’ve written, or podcasts you’ve created, anything you want to pass on, even mediums you might not think of. We all have stories, we all have lessons; save them and put them there.
Then, how do you keep all of this glued together, how do you maintain it over generations? That’s where the family mastermind comes in. There’s a book, The Five Frankfurt Brothers, about the Rothschilds, the patriarch sent his sons out to all the financial centers in Europe, but they came back together once a year, spent time together, formed strong family bonds, made sure they stayed aligned and everything still checked out. That maintained the culture, and everyone stayed close. That’s why I went a bit heavy on this first pillar, the rest doesn’t matter if you don’t get this right. Look at the Rockefeller story versus the Vanderbilts: the Rockefellers had this pillar; the Vanderbilts, not so much. That’s why you still have Vanderbilt University, the Biltmore, Anderson Cooper on television somewhere, but for the most part, the Vanderbilt legacy is gone.
The other four pillars: tax, insurance, and legal frameworks, the more straightforward part of protecting everything against wealth destroyers, predators, creditors, and so on. Number three is governance and risk management: who owns what, who makes decisions over what. It’s very important that this is clear, because it eliminates family conflict, and the governance piece also covers how you resolve family conflicts, since every family has its own dynamic and not everyone gets along, even though we’d like them to. Number four is the family bank, which is a passion of mine, that’s what we specialize in at Producers Wealth, and it’s also something we’ve helped a lot of other family offices build through consulting. Number five is asset management, where you codify your investment philosophy and set the strategy you’re going to follow as a family moving forward.
There’s a funny story about that too, Jim Rickards, the famous bestselling author, has consulted for old European aristocratic families, families that go back to Roman times, families that basically owned Rome and are still around today. He worked with one of them, the Colonna family, and wrote about how the patriarch told him his own grandfather had passed along a simple rule: a third, a third, a third, a third in real estate, a third in gold, a third in art, because centuries ago those were the asset classes that mattered. What’s interesting is how simple they kept it, and how transferable it was. You can do the same thing with asset management, codify and write your own investment philosophy, and share it.
You’re making my job easy here, I thought we’d walk through the pillars together, but you just rolled right through them. That was perfect, and it makes a lot of sense, it’s actually very intuitive. When you think through this framework, there’s not too much complexity people need to grasp to shift this paradigm around how they think about their wealth, versus the traditional model. One of the things I believe is fundamentally flawed about the traditional model is that you build a nest egg over 40 years, wait until you’re 65, and only then start drawing it down, say, 4% a year, and start living your life. But if you have a true integrated, end-to-end strategy, you can create income today, not tomorrow. You can live more intentionally and be much more fulfilled in what you’re doing. So it’s a massive paradigm shift for people to make, it’s not just the investing piece, the financial capital, it’s all these other forms of capital that matter just as much. Once you have this family office framework and end-to-end strategy, you can really live a better life, which is what it’s all about.
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It’s about today. Like you just said, that mindset shift, “I’ll pull income sometime in the future, 20 or 40 years from now, from some asset I don’t even know the approximate amount of yet”, sounds crazy when you say it out loud, versus asking, “What about today?” And the same framework applies to philanthropy, which spans all five pillars, someone asked me about that too. It’s part of legacy, part of your tax, insurance, and legal frameworks, part of governance and risk management, part of family banking, part of asset management. You can start that today. It’s the same with legacy, people think, “I’m going to leave a legacy,” but you have to disconnect the idea that legacy is just money. I look at it the same way we think about financial planning: why not live your legacy today? Children learn by observation. My kids are still young, and even older kids learn more from what you show them than what you tell them, or from a stack of documents you leave behind. So, again, start today, you can keep shaping that legacy as you evolve and grow, sharing the lesson, because as a mentor of mine said, legacy isn’t what you leave someone, it’s what you leave inside them. Let them see you live it.
And the whole idea of a “family wealth operating system”, yes, the financial side is a big piece, but there are other components that matter just as much, maybe more, because if you focus on the non-financial pieces, the actual humans, since we’re strange creatures, that amplifies and multiplies the financial side. That’s why I’m so passionate about this topic: I’ve seen the impact it can have, the clarity and confidence it creates. It can also give you a different sense of purpose, because let’s face it, Dave, in business we love what we do, we’re passionate about it, but there’s a time when you get burned out. Everybody does; I don’t think you’d be human if you didn’t. Sometimes you just need a little flame to reignite the fire inside you. You have this purpose in your business, what about lighting that same flame on the family side? Now you’re building two exciting things, and the family wealth operating system could be your legacy, not just a business you eventually exit from. It’s like a tree you’re planting in the shade of which you’ll never sit. That’s why I’m excited about it, and I love how you brought up the lens and the mindset shift, because that’s where it all starts, a different way of operating, a different way of looking at things, and giving ownership of parts of the system to other people in your family, just like in your business.
MC, how is AI changing wealth creation today?
It’s incredible. We’ve all interacted with it in some form, even if you’re shaking your head right now saying, “I’ve never used ChatGPT or Claude,” if you’ve been on a website, you’ve interacted with AI. I think it’s an incredible wealth-creation tool. I think it’s going to take the lessons of the internet and amplify them. It’s funny, I was talking with someone the other day about this. I still remember, dating myself, having to handwrite my papers in college, hand them in to be typed up, then pick them up and submit them for grading. Then the internet came along, and I remember how fearful everyone was of it, “This is going to change everything, there’s going to be a ton of jobs gone”, but it changed the economy and created a platform on which more millionaires have been made than on any other platform. I think AI is taking that and about to 100x it.
How you approach it matters, whether you come from a position of fear, saying, “I’m not going to incorporate that.” Remember the people who said the same thing about the internet, “People still want to talk to people, I’m not going on the internet”? Now everybody’s on the internet; it eventually won. Same with Zoom calls and Skype, “I want to do things face to face.” But you can help so many more people, impact so many more people, by doing it online. Yes, it’s great to still meet in person, it’s a different energy, but think about the meaningful, deep relationships we’ve both formed with people over calls and online. AI is very exciting, it’s changed the game completely. If you have an idea, the speed at which you can go from idea to execution is measured in minutes now, not even hours, just to test something.
In the wealth space, it’s going to be fascinating to watch. There are already trading and investment platforms where people can essentially create their own ETFs, if you’re interested in, say, the ten best mining companies, you can go on a platform and build that portfolio yourself, using AI to do the research, analyze numbers and metrics, and pull all the data. It’s amplifying everything. We’ve already had a lot of information at our fingertips; now we have a lot more, which is going to lead to fascinating developments in entrepreneurship, business, and the financial-services world we operate in.
It’s really an amazing time to be alive, and there are so many dimensions to think about with AI. Take the auto industry, for example, say you were bullish on it and wanted to invest there. Think about where AI is today, where it’ll be in 12 months given the speed of change, and where it’ll be in three years. We always want to be investing where the puck is going. Just within that one industry, all the OEM suppliers are having their entire business models upended by things like tariffs and how they’re sourcing products, some companies could become wildly more efficient, others could be put completely out of business because they’re operating under an old model. There are so many different dynamics to consider when investing in a sector: what’s happening today, what’s happening in the near term, and what’s happening in the long term. The pace of change is so exponential that a lot of people don’t even realize it, and that creates massive opportunities.
I also like to think about always investing in places where the macroeconomic fundamentals are strong. Yes, there are going to be great companies, and there are going to be a lot that go under because of AI. But think about the infrastructure, right now, the Magnificent Seven are essentially subsidizing the entire AI market, betting on a future return. That return is coming, but if you can invest in the infrastructure right now, that’s probably the one thing we know with certainty is going to keep scaling. So there are a lot of dynamics at play, and obviously a lot more tools now for how we operate as better investors, diligence, tracking, management, communication. It’s important for investors to constantly stay on top of that, to be a listening post for all these changes, and to use them to make better decisions about investing, creating capital, and protecting your business.
That’s a lot like what you were saying about investing in infrastructure, Dave, it reminds me of the California Gold Rush. If you study what actually happened there, the fortunes weren’t made by the people digging gold out of the ground, they were made by the people selling the picks and shovels, the clothes (like Levi Strauss), the financial services for people to bank with (like Wells Fargo). A lot of companies around today trace back to that era, and none of them were the ones pulling gold out of the ground. Hospitality and food companies did well too, it’s incredible to look back on. So it really is an infrastructure play.
To your point about investment philosophy for your family, I share a conversation in the book that I had with Jim Rogers, the legendary investor. We were talking about a lot of different things, what’s hot, what’s not, some of the trends, and he looked at me and said, “MC, if you could only invest in three things for the next hundred years, what would they be?” I thought about it and figured this had to be a trick question. Then I looked at him and said, “Now I understand your investment philosophy, now I understand why you’re the commodities guy.” He said, “You’re catching on, kid, bingo.” That’s why there’s a Rogers commodities index: if he had to put capital in one spot for the next hundred years, commodities, food, soybeans, corn, cattle, are a pretty good spot to be.
Everyone develops their own version of this, with their own allocations, but it’s interesting to look at where the world is going, what we’ll still need, and all the emerging trends that create opportunity. I think this AI wave is exciting, and the tools and companies already incorporating it in our space are exciting too.
If you could give just one piece of advice to the audience about how they could accelerate their wealth journey, what would it be?
Wherever you are today, you created it. The beautiful thing is, that means you have the power to create what comes next.
Great question. Where we are today, all of us, we created. I think that’s the most powerful lesson I’ve learned, wherever you find yourself, you did this. If you have a life beyond your wildest dreams, you did that. If you’re struggling, if you’re in a deep, dark place, which I’ve been in myself at one point when I told myself this exact same thing, you did that too. The beautiful thing is the empowerment that comes from owning all of it. Even if you have an amazing life, and I know a lot of people listening to this show do, there’s always a next level. So it becomes: who do I need to become, and what do I need to do, to get to that next level? What growth do I need to go through?
I do that exercise every year, I look at where I’m at. It’s almost like stepping on a scale to check your health: “Oh, you’re in incredible shape, fantastic, you did this.” Or, “You had a little too much fun over the holidays, you did that too.” Either way, it’s: okay, now how do we get to the next level, how do we course-correct? That’s what I’d pass along, especially for a wealth journey. Is everything smooth sailing? Absolutely not. Can we learn lessons from things that didn’t go the way we wanted? Absolutely, and that’s experience.
Over time, and this is the thing about getting older, I used to listen to people talk about the experience they’d built over decades and think, “Is that just something everybody says?” But it’s remarkable: 25 years later, being in the United States, I look back and realize all those moments, lessons, and experiences are what made me who I am today. And then I have to figure out what other experiences I need to go through to get to the next level, the next better version of myself, to be a better partner, husband, father, leader in my family, leader in my community, and leader in my business.
That really resonates. It’s such a great example, getting on a scale, because it’s so raw for listeners. It’s just us, and there’s no way to cheat; it’s black and white. Another way to frame it for people is the saying that all growth starts with being honest with yourself. Whether you check in annually, monthly, or quarterly, you’re really asking yourself, with complete honesty: is my life congruent? Do my actions align with my vision? I like to think about the six forms of capital in this context, not just financial capital, but spiritual, emotional, intellectual, and physical capital too. You could be having a great year financially, but if some of your most important relationships are really suffering, that’s worth an honest look. Creating that true honesty and reflection, in the context of the vision you’re working toward, is how you get to living an intentional life, one with congruency and the right energy to fulfill it.
True honesty is asking yourself: Is my life congruent? Are my actions aligned with my vision?
Absolutely. When you map out a wealth strategy and a family wealth operating system, you start where you’re at, just be honest about where that is. You have a vision of where you’re going, and then you map out a plan to get there and build on it every day. I also want to share this: setting up these systems for myself and my own family wasn’t something I did in a weekend, or even in 30 days. You could realistically have all the structures in place in 90 days if you really put your mind to it, but it’s a moving target, things change, it’s very fluid, and you think of new things along the way to keep adding as you grow and learn. Over the years, I’d wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat thinking, “Oh, I forgot about this,” and go revise the documents. So one thing I always tell people who ask how quickly this can be done: this isn’t a project that gets finished, it’s something you keep working on and building toward, forever, the same way you keep living and leaving a legacy.
Love it, MC, great job on the book, congratulations. If people want to get a copy or connect with you, where can they find you?
Thanks, Dave. Yes, The Family Office for Business Owners: Build a Family Wealth System as Powerful as Your Business is available on Amazon, or your listeners can grab both of my books, the ebook and audiobook, for free at producerswealth.com/books. There are two links there: one for Get Wealthy for Sure: The Number One Financial Strategy for Business Owners to Multiply Wealth Predictably, and one for The Family Office for Business Owners. Both books, ebook and audiobook, are free at producerswealth.com/books.
Awesome, we’ll make sure to put that in the show notes. MC, thanks so much for your time and insights today. In summary, you nailed it: it’s the wisdom built over these two decades, through mistakes, through the journey. Personally, that’s what gives me so much passion for helping other people, because I believe they can do it in less time, live their best life sooner, by taking the wisdom from other people’s mistakes, from those willing to share their journey with others. Really appreciate all the wisdom you’ve captured, and all the work that went into the book, I know how hard that is. So, everyone, please support MC, check out the book, and we’ll see you on the next one.
Thanks for listening to this episode of Wealth Strategy Secrets. If you’d like a free copy of the book, go to holisticwealthstrategy.com. If you’d like to learn more about upcoming opportunities at Pantheon, visit pantheoninvest.com.