Legacy Built to Last: 3 Principles to Build a Modern “Dynasty” | EP. 10

In this final, structural installment of the Sunrise C.A.P.I.T.A.L. Strategy series, host Brian Spear explores the final pillar: Legacy Built to Last. Addressing the alarming statistic that 70% of wealthy families lose their wealth by the second generation and 90% lose it by the third, this episode delivers a blueprint on how high-net-worth investors, founders, and executives can insulate their hard-earned capital from generational dissipation. Moving beyond standard administrative paperwork, the primary thesis frames proactive estate planning as an intentional structural love letter designed to secure permanent family freedom and purpose.

The briefing centers on three timeless principles executed by history’s most enduring wealth dynasties: thinking in generations rather than short-term cycles, strictly separating bedrock capital from lifestyle capital, and transferring strategic wisdom before wealth. Brian uses the multi-generational structures of the Kennedy and Rockefeller families to contrast how explicit asset design prevents heirs from liquidating the principal foundation of a fortune, as happened to the Vanderbilt family fortune. Reflecting on his personal journey from a mobile home childhood to managing a nine-figure commercial portfolio, Brian connects asset durability to social impact. Listeners will learn how to transition from an “outer scorecard” focused on market applause to an “inner scorecard” focused on character and continuity, equipping them to establish irrevocable trusts and multi-generational financial literacy milestones that outlast their lifetimes.

Key Takeaways

• Build an Ironclad Generational Mindset: Shifting the investment time horizon from years to centuries structurally lowers investment ego, stabilizes risk tolerance, and optimizes assets for long-term endurance rather than temporary market applause.
• Isolate Untouchable Bedrock Capital: Families must structurally separate perpetual, un-liquidatable bedrock principal from consumable lifestyle capital into irrevocable dynasty structures to prevent downstream heirs from expanding spending or dissolving the engine of wealth.
• Transfer Wisdom Before Transferring Wealth: Capital distributed to financially uneducated heirs functions as a countdown clock; long-term asset survival requires pairing structures with sequential, age-based financial literacy milestones.
• Establish Restrictive Distribution Milestones: Implementing delayed, age-based access to trust distributions forces heirs to establish individual career identities, work ethic, and character in the real world separate from family wealth.
• Operate From an Inner Scorecard: True legacy and operational happiness rely on internal character indicators and self-evaluation rather than external markers like bank account sizes or public recognition.

Key Topics Covered

• Multi-generational Wealth Dissipation Statistics
• The Final Pillar of the Sunrise C.A.P.I.T.A.L. Strategy
• Estate Planning as a Structural Love Letter
• The Kennedy Dynasty Trust Architecture and Principal Isolation
• The Vanderbilt Fortune Evaporation vs. Rockefeller Endurance
• Differentiating Bedrock Capital from Lifestyle Capital
• Age-Based Distribution Milestones for Heirs
• Mitigating the Entitlement Pitfalls of Trust Fund Dynamics
• Warren Buffett’s Inner Scorecard vs. Outer Scorecard Metaphor
• Defining Real Success Through Lovability and Social Impact

Episode Chapters

00:00 Intro

Brian Spear introduces a stark statistic on multi-generational wealth loss, posing an uncomfortable question about whether your portfolio will ultimately serve or burden future generations.

01:26 L – Legacy Built to Last

An overview of the seventh and final pillar of the Sunrise C.A.P.I.T.A.L. Strategy, explaining how everything from cash flow to tax efficiency culminates in permanent durability.

04:51 1. Think in Generations (Not Years)

Brian explores why widening your planning horizon to centuries dampens leverage risk and shifts your investment identity from an owner to a long-term capital steward.

07:09 “Structure” Makes You Wealthy

A direct historic comparison between Cornelius Vanderbilt’s unstructured wealth dissipation and the Rockefeller family’s enduring multi-generational trust architecture.

08:45 2. Never Touch the “Bedrock”

An analysis of J.P. Kennedy’s 1926 trust design, demonstrating how blocking principal withdrawals transforms wealth from a consumable item into an untouchable compounding engine.

11:16 Don’t Spoil. Construct Character

Brian addresses the quiet fear of spoiling heirs, sharing his perspective as a father and outlining how adversity builds foundational integrity.

13:04 3. Pass Down Wisdom Before Wealth

A breakdown of the third sage principle, focusing on why transferring financial thinking, margin of safety rules, and patience must always precede transferring capital.

16:25 How to Secure Your Legacy Now

A tactical roadmap for modern high-net-worth investors, covering how to define your bedrock amount, document intent on paper, and review structures every decade.

22:28 Your Inner “Score Card”

Brian highlights a Warren Buffett lesson on character, challenging listeners to grade their behaviors by internal standards rather than the external applause of the market.

25:10 The Ultimate Sign of Success

Reflecting on an address Warren Buffett gave late in life at Georgia Tech, Brian discusses why true fulfillment cannot be purchased with a check.

28:01 Become a Sage Investor

The episode concludes with a synthesis of capital stewardship, previewing a real-world real estate case study designed to demonstrate these pillars in action.

Full Transcript

[Transcript begins]

Brian Spear: Here’s a stat that’ll stop you right in your tracks, 70% of wealthy families lose their wealth by the second generation, and a full 90% lose it by the third generation, not because they weren’t smart, not because they didn’t work hard, but because they never built a bedrock foundation. Today’s all about building wealth that will actually survive you. Here’s the uncomfortable question, what if you accumulate wealth and it disappears in one generation? What if you build all of this and it doesn’t matter? What if on paper you succeed it? But privately you’re wondering, is this it? What’s the point of all this?

I’ve met a lot of very successful people in the five to twenty five million dollar net worth range, right? On paper they’re quote unquote successful in the access to society, right? They’ve won. They’ve won the game of life, but there’s something that’s unsettled inside of them. The income is there. The portfolio is there. The reputation is there, but the legacy, it’s not yet defined, and that’s what this episode is all about.

Welcome back to the Sage Investor Podcast. I’m Brian Spear in my mission is to help as many people as possible generate cash flow and build legacy wealth in a tax-efficient manner, because that’s what I’m trying to do for my family. You’re going to help as many people as possible do that as we can along the way. And today we arrive at the final pillar of our seven pillar framework, the Sunrise Capital Strategy. See cash flow, A, add value, P, protect the downside, I invest, don’t speculate, T, tax-efficient structure, A, assurance of outcome, and now L, legacy built to last.

This is the culmination. Everything that we’ve discussed up to this point has been preparation. It’s been structure, discipline, durability, margin of safety, compounding. In my studies, here’s how a Sage Investor thinks about legacy. They’ve got three principles here. Principle number one, think in generations, principle number two, separate bedrock capital from lifestyle capital, and principle number three, transfer wisdom before wealth. Survival gets you durability. Durability gets you freedom. Freedom gives you the ability to think beyond yourself.

So let’s reframe everything that we’ve done so far here. Cash flow first, and that removes anxiety, add value, that creates control where you control your own destiny, protect the downside that preserves survival. Invest, don’t speculate, that extends your time horizon. Tax-efficiency, that protects compounding, assurance of outcome. That increases the likelihood, the probability that you’re going to be successful. But none of that matters. None of that matters unless it actually leads somewhere, and that somewhere is legacy.

There’s a saying that I absolutely love, that I absolutely adore that I’ve taken to heart here, and it’s all revolving around the fact that money doesn’t buy happiness. If you follow this plan, the capital strategy plan, we’ve been doing it for a long time, it is much more of an inevitability that you’re going to be successful in new time, right? Real estate’s not a get rich quick style of business over a short period of time with a low probability of success. It is a build massive amounts of wealth over a very long period of time, with a very high probability of success, but you have to actually be an investor. But what we know is that money doesn’t buy happiness, even if you get to the promised land. There’s a lot of individuals that have a figured net worse and beyond that actually are having very difficult lives. They’re not happy.

So what is happiness, right? There’s a great saying that I love that I just cherish here, and it’s if you want to be happy for a day, buy some dessert. If you want to be happy for a week, take a vacation. If you want to be happy for a month, go buy a new car. But if you want to be happy for the rest of your life, be someone that people will miss when you’re gone, and that speaks to legacy. That speaks to legacy.

Really, really close friend of mine, name Scott, ultimately told me something once that I’ve never forgotten regarding the idea and the concept of legacy. It was about a state planning, right? At the end of the day, a state planning, if you do it properly, right? You set up your will, you set up your trust, you do an exceptional job of setting up an exceptional estate passing along the legacy. The truth is, a state planning done properly is the ultimate love letter. Let that sink in a little bit, right? It’s not paperwork, it’s not tax avoidance, it’s not legal structuring. It is a love letter, the ultimate love letter. It says, I love you enough to protect you from ruin. It says, I love you enough to design your freedom. I love you enough to think beyond my own lifetime. Legacy is not about our own demise. Everybody unfortunately is going to meet that at some point in the future. There’s a 100% success rate in that occurring in time. It’s a sad state of affairs. It’s not about death, right? It’s about continuity. It’s about continuity. And the greatest expression of love is not emotional, it’s structural.

So we’re going to come back to that in a little bit. But first, let’s go ahead and lay the foundation here, okay? If your grandchildren inherited all that money tomorrow, would it serve them or would it burden them? That’s not a rhetorical question. So let’s move on to the three principles that we have here in the how to actually go about building a legacy, right? If you want a legacy that’s built to last, how do you go about doing it? We have three ironclad principles inside of the sunrise capital strategy that we follow to build that legacy.

The first one is to think in generations. You need to think in generations and not days because the decisions that you make today, they ripple far beyond one lifetime. They echo through your children, through your grandchildren, your community, right? And even the people that you might not ever meet, when you shift your time horizon from years to generations down the road, everything changes. Your risk tolerance changes, your leverage decisions change. Your patience increases and your ego ends up decreasing. You become much more of a steward than an owner. You stop optimizing for applause in the marketplace, right? You start optimizing for endurance over the long haul.

And this principle of thinking in generations, it’s rooted in the fundamental rule of compounding, the longer the time horizon, the more powerful the compounding effect becomes. And that’s true for money, but it’s also true for knowledge. It’s also true for relationships, reputation, character, all these things compound over long periods of time. Something does not just apply to capital, it applies to behavior.

Warren Buffett captured this one beautifully, you guys all know this quote, someone is sitting in the shade today because somebody planted a tree a long time ago. And that’s what you have the luxury of doing. If we’ve become successful in the eyes of society, you make a couple of really quality decisions today and decades from now, generations from now, kids, grandchildren, great-grandchildren can all benefit from the decisions that you make today. The person who planted that tree, they didn’t benefit from the shade that it actually creates, right? But somebody else does, somebody else did.

And the same ideas derived from the great unbelievable cathedrals of Europe. You’ve had the chance to spend a little bit of time out there. These buildings were built hundreds of years ago, but they took exceedingly long periods of time to put together. They were built over centuries. The people who laid the foundation, who laid that first stone, they knew that they were never going to ultimately see the finished ceiling at the end of the day. But they were driven by a vision of something that would ultimately outlast them over time. And that’s a generational thinking.

So here’s a number that really kind of resets perspective, right? We’ve talked about compound interest and over long periods of time, it is the eighth wonder of the world. Let’s emphasize it by extending that perspective just a little bit further. One million dollars, a mere one million dollars, compounded at a mere 5% rate for 200 years becomes over 17 trillion dollars. Again, the difference is not brilliance, it’s duration, and setting up a structure that allows for compound interest to take effect.

Most families think in one lifetime, dynasties think in centuries, and history gives us a couple of paths. You guys have seen it, right? Cornelius Vanderbilt. He died one of the richest men in the world. Within three generations, all that wealth was gone. He had no structure, had no generational design. And if you contrast that with the Rockefellers, multiple generations later, that wealth still endures, and the difference was not intelligence. Both of these individuals exceedingly intelligent patriarchs. It was structure, that’s the difference. And it began with a generational mindset.

So the real question is not whether or not you can build wealth, you most assuredly can. We’ve played out a plan of exactly how to get to the promised land. The question is what is the legacy that you want to leave? And how can you structure your wealth today so that it makes a positive impact on your family, right now, your community, and the world long after you’re gone? You now stand at that fork, right? You’ve become successful in the eyes of society. You can choose whether you just want to build wealth, or whether you want to build wealth that lasts, and those are not the same thing.

The second evergreen principle we have underneath leave a legacy is separate bedrock capital from lifestyle capital. You need to separate bedrock capital from lifestyle capital. Bedrock capital is untouchable principle. It compounds forever, and lifestyle capital ends up becoming everything else. You can be personal discretionary spending, some consumption, some some risk capital over and above what you would consider bedrock capital. Most families blend the two, and that’s how fortunes die over time. But dynasties separate these two things.

Many years ago I read a book on JP Kennedy, it was a patriarch of the Kennedy family. A lot of people know John F. Kennedy, JFK, president of the United States, but far fewer people have ever even heard of JP Kennedy. The truth is, JP Kennedy is actually the patriarch of the Kennedy family. It’s a renowned family that has multi-generational wealth, and JP Kennedy is the individual that ultimately set that up at the very beginning. How did he do it? When I read that book, I was unbelievably impressed with the foundation that he was able to lay. He was an exceptional entrepreneur, a great businessman who ultimately had multiple different businesses. He was a banker and made a lot of money and real estate along the way as well. After he built wealth, once he created it, his true genius wasn’t just wealth creation. It was wealth structure.

So in 1926, he established a series of dynasty trusts with some iron clad rules. Number one, the heirs could never withdraw the principle. They could only live off of the interest and the income deriving from that principle. And then also another one of the beautiful aspects are he stipulated inside of the trust that that principle, which was never to be touched, was to be passed on to their children upon their death, basically setting up his grandkids as well. And that was going to last into perpetuity. And as you can imagine, as we’ve talked about, $1 million compounded at a mere 5% over 200 years becomes over $17 trillion. So he set his family up in such a way that the bedrock capital will be there into perpetuity continuing to compound for generations to come. And ultimately, that’s how you leave a legacy to the next generation.

So Kennedy was obviously adhering to the first two principles, right? He’s already been thinking in generations and he clearly understood how to separate bedrock capital from lifestyle capital. And before we dive into that third-stage principle today, I just want to plant a question. I just want to plant a question in your mind to tie legacy to the concept of wealth. Do you have an inner scorecard or do you have an outer scorecard? How do you view yourself? Do you have an inner scorecard or an outer scorecard?

I will share that my biggest fear in life. My single biggest fear in life, I’m asked in forums and entrepreneurial environments when you’re really trying to get to know somebody, right? What is the single thing that you’re most scared of in this world? And for me, I am petrified that my children, my two girls, will not know for want. And ultimately, they will grow up to be more versions of spoiled, trust-fun babies. I’m petrified in terms of how do I instill exceptional amounts of character into them knowing where I came from. I’m an individual that grew up in a mobile home, didn’t really come from much, ultimately built an 8-figure net worth. I’ve done pretty successful for myself and my family over time. And I would never change the route that I took to ultimately get here because that path of being forged through fire is ultimately where that character derives. So I would never change it. And I never want to take that away from my next generation, right, from all of the kids that are in the house. But how do you try to put them in a position where they can struggle and build that character and move through adversity?

My biggest fear is that they’re not going to have that luxury. It’s an odd dynamic because you obviously want better for the next generation, but on the flip side, you don’t want to be able to give them too much and ultimately spoil them along the way. I’m petrified that I’m ultimately going to spoil the kids. So how do we go about solving that problem? The third principle is what we’ve ultimately decided is the best way to do it. And that third principle is to transfer wisdom before you transfer wealth. You have to pass along not only wealth because that is not enough, but you also have to pass along wisdom along the way, sage wisdom.

So continuing on the story with JP Kennedy, what did he ultimately do to try to pass along that level of wisdom to his kids and ultimately grandkids and great grandkids beyond that? What he ended up doing was this. We talked about the principle, the vault, the bedrock capital that he set aside, only living off of that respective income. But then he set some other principles inside of his trust and he said, look, the kids they’re not going to be able to tap into any of that respective income whatsoever until they’re at least 36 years old. Why did he choose to do that? Why the age difference? Kennedy believed that his family, his children, they needed to prove themselves in the real world much earlier. They got to go out and build careers, stand on your own two feet, earn respect, establish an identity that is separate from the family wealth.

And the result of that is by the time that the kids ultimately become 35 years old, they’re kind of, you know, becoming into the middle age, right? By the time that they could actually access the income derived from the bedrock capital, they’ve already established themselves. They weren’t just trust fund kids, trust fund babies, they were veterans, they were lawyers, they were public servants. The bedrock capital did not make them lazy, it made them fearless. Robert Kennedy could serve as an attorney general pursuing justice over corporate legal fees. Ted Kennedy, he could spend 47 years in the Senate focused on health care and civil rights. And that is exactly what JP Kennedy sought out to achieve when he ultimately built his family’s legacy.

When he sat down and he wrote the dynasty, what did he say? His entire life, his entire life’s mission was that I want to build wealth. I want to build a large amount of wealth for my family so that we could pass it along and build a legacy that lasts for multiple generations, why? Because he said, I want my family to be able to dedicate their lives to public service. And what an absolutely wonderful result that he has had, right? The principle, the bedrock capital, it compounded across generations. Kennedy’s initial trusts that were estimated at about $200, $300, $400 million in today’s dollars. They now support dozens of errors while remaining structurally intact. The family has produced 16, more than 16 members of Congress, diplomats, activists, authors, exceptionally successful individuals that bedrock capital, it did not just preserve wealth. It funded legacy.

And if you contrast that with the Vanderbilt’s Cornelius Vanderbilt was the richest man in America in 1877. He left $100 million, which is about $2.5 billion today to his errors with no protective structure. But by 1973, less than a hundred years later, just 96 years later, when 120 Vanderbilt descendants gathered, not one of them was wealthy. The family fortune had evaporated. No bedrock capital, no structure, no dynasty. The difference between Kennedy and Vanderbilt was not intelligence, was not initial wealth. It was structure. Kennedy built bedrock. Vanderbilt didn’t. You’ll have to choose wisely.

So how does this apply today, right? We’re talking about stuff that occurred hundreds of years ago. How does that apply right now today for current real world folks seeking to build a legacy that lasts? What we would say is this, look, I’m not in a state planning attorney. You’ll have to sit down with yours and ultimately craft the trust and the mechanisms that you believe are best suited for you and your families you progress. And I don’t want to get that granular in this respective podcast. It’s not the intent, but we’ll just lay out a little bit of framework. One of the things that you need to do is determine your bedrock amount, define your bedrock capital amount. What is the base that’s going to go in the vault that is never to be sold? You have to define that, whatever it means for you and your family.

You then need to sit down and establish an irrevocable dynasty trust, something that is able and capable of lasting for multiple generations. You also need to explain, again, in the interest of passing along not only wealth, but also wisdom and wisdom before the wealth, you need to communicate the concept of the vault of the bedrock capital and the concept of the vault that it is never to be touched with your ears. You also need to set age based distribution milestones. Many, many, many families have had absolutely brutal results by too early in the tenure of a young adolescent providing them with a windfall of cash. I’m sure that you can relate to this. When I was 22 years old, I knew everything. But the truth of the matter is, looking back multiple decades, I realized now how little I did know. I now today take a different perspective. I only know that I know nothing, even though you are full of energy and wanting to take over the world. World domination is no longer on my to do list, but at the time, it was. I mean, I was out there trying to take over the world, and the truth is, individuals that are at that age, they’re still forming what they want and need to do for the rest of their lives. It takes them a little bit of time to go out into the real world, get a real job, earn their own income, stand on their own two feet as a high quality member of society, and only after they’ve gotten to that threshold, and that threshold will be dependent upon what you believe it to be for you and your children, but you need to set aged, based distribution milestones so that the income that they’re receiving only occurs after they have proven themselves to be men and women of high quality character so that they’re not in precarious situations where they’re focusing on the old drug sex and rock and roll sort of scenarios that you see far too many trust fund babies end up being in.

In addition to that, you need to pair the bedrock capital with financial education. They need to know at least the basics. They might not want espouse or have the capacity to spend as much time, energy, and effort and finances you do as you grab the ball, as you hold the wheel and you steer your family’s financial foundation from the driver’s seat. They might not have any interest in that, but they need to have the basic level of understanding. And I would also say that inside of your trust, you need to document your intent. Write down what your intent is with this respective capital, Ironclad rules, very similar to how JP Kennedy did. This is what this amount of bedrock capital is for is how it is to be used. It will not only go on to you as the heir, but also when you pass, it’ll go on to your children as well, so on and so forth into perpetuity. Whatever that means for you, sit down and document your intent because if you do not put it on paper on purpose in advance, I can promise the moment that one of those individuals has the ability to liquidate the trust, they will.

The farther removed the individuals get from seeing the hard work, energy, and effort it took to ultimately build that first generation wealth, oftentimes the second generation can feel the impact and ramifications because they can see the hard work that is put into ultimately creating that. But the third generation typically is too far removed. They were not able to see that hard work put in. And because they did not see the price that you paid to build the wealth, they don’t understand the value associated with the dollars and it’s very difficult for them to grasp it unless you put in place boundaries, rules, and document your intent in advance. And the last thing I’d say on the topic of just a state planning in general is to review and adapt it every decade, every 10 years, review and adapt it, make sure that everybody’s in the same page moving forward, things change, and you just want to make sure that you keep it fresh for a million reasons.

I will stop there. The intent is not to get exceedingly granular, it’s to lay a framework for you so that you can think through how you might want to craft a similar dynasty trust for you and your family that can literally build a legacy to last for multiple generations. That’s what I intend to do. And I hope that you have the luxury of doing the same for you and your family as you progress. So while separating bedrock capital from your lifestyle capital is one of the most important decisions that you’re going to make for your family for the next multiple hundreds of years, the third principle is just as critical.

You have to transfer wisdom before wealth because money without judgment is dangerous and the history proves it. Shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves and three generations. The first generation builds it, second one maintains it, third one dissipates it because wealth was transferred, but the thinking was not. Benjamin Franklin’s got a great quote on this, right? An investment in knowledge pays the best interest. And Charlie Munger in his typical quippy fashion says it very concisely, go to bed smarter than when you woke up. If you can pass along the capital strategy framework, if your ears understand margin of safety, patience, tax efficiency, stewardship, the inner score card discipline, then wealth has a fighting chance. But if they don’t, it’s just a countdown clock. So you have to transfer wisdom before wealth and not after.

So I just hinted at the idea of the inner score card again. Let’s kind of revisit that. Go a little bit deeper. It actually brings me back to Warren Buffett, you know, Buffett at one point was the wealthiest individual on the entire planet. He built a business from $0 to $1 trillion in one generation. It’s absolutely amazing, right? But his ultimate objective was not money. It was living with an internal score card. One of the favorite things that I’ve really come to understand is the idea of the difference between the having an inner score card or an outer score card. And the big question about how people behave is really, you know, whether they’ve got an inner score card or an outer score card. I really do believe it’s really the only way that you can actually be happy in life is to have an inner score card. And you know, it ties into one of these John Wooden quotes that I love as well. John Wooden has conveyed that, you know, your reputation is different than your character. Your reputation is what other people think you are, but your character is what you actually are. And that’s the difference between an inner score card and an outer score card.

I’m going to quote Warren Buffett directly here. Warren Buffett’s said, I always pose it this way. I always say, look, if the world couldn’t see your results, would you rather be thought of as the world’s greatest investor? But in reality, have the world’s worst record or would you rather be thought of as the world’s worst investor when you actually have the best? And that’s obviously a really phenomenal metaphor, right? It goes, he goes on to explain that if all of the emphasis is on what the world is going to think about you, forgetting about how you really behave, you’re going to wind up with an outer score card. And Buffett learned this lesson from his father, right? So he says, look, my dad, he was a 100% inner score card guy. That knowledge was passed along from generation to generation. He espouses it. And I absolutely love that principle of having an inner score card at the end of the day when you lay your head down at night. Did you know that you worked your hardest? Did you know that you have exceptional character, your man of integrity, you’re doing what you say you’re going to do? And honestly, it’s not about money. If you’re just simply trying to accumulate money to impress the world, to impress other individuals, you need to spend a little bit of time looking in the mirror because that’s not going to give you happiness. You have to be focused on your own internal score card. What are you trying to achieve for yourself and your family and have the biggest impact possible while you’re here? That’s what actually matters most.

You know, Buffett went on to say that his dad was a maverick, right? He was a maverick. You know, not a maverick for the sake of being a maverick, he just didn’t care about what other people thought. His dad taught him how life should be lived. He’s never seen anybody quite like it, right? Buffett said he’s never seen anybody quite like it. For me, for me, I try to live my life focusing on the idea and the concept of an inner score card for this reason. And that kind of ties us back into the idea and the concept of happiness, right? That money doesn’t buy happiness in order to really be happy. You got to live a life that such that people will miss you when you’re gone.

And you know, we love studying history’s greatest investors, history’s greatest entrepreneurs, businessmen, so that we can, so I can personally continue to get better and as an entrepreneur as a businessman to grow the business and be a better capital allocator to grow wealth over time. But as you go through all of that study, you also come to realize when you read biographies of all the individuals that have been so unbelievably successful financially in the eyes of society, you also come to realize that some of them have an absolute train wreck of a personal life. You come to appreciate some who espouse the character and the principles that you want to espouse in your life. And you also had the luxury of seeing some of the mistakes that individuals have made over time and trying to avoid those mistakes, right? If I’ve seen further than others, it is only because I’ve stood on the shoulders of giants.

And one such example is Warren Buffett speaking about his own individual personal life towards the end of his journey, late in his life, his wife was unfortunate on the very six. She was going to pass away very soon. He was actually giving a speech as he often does. He went to the local university. I think he was at Georgia Tech and he was giving a speech and he just asked a lot of questions from the local adolescents there and somebody asked him what had been his greatest success in life or maybe what his greatest failure was. And oftentimes he’ll talk about his mistakes of omission in terms of investments, things that he hasn’t pulled the trigger on. But this time he didn’t. Instead, he said, you know, basically when you get to my age, you really measure your success in life by how many of the people that you want to have love you actually do love you. I know people who have a lot of money and they get testimonial dinners and they get hospital wings named after them. But the truth is that nobody in the world loves them. And if you get to my age and life and nobody thinks well of you, I don’t care how big your bank account is. Your life is a disaster. And that’s the ultimate test of how you’ve lived your life.

The trouble with love is that you can’t buy it. You can buy a lot of things in life, right? You can buy testimonial dinners. You can buy pamphlets and say how wonderful you are. But the only way to get love is to be lovable and it’s very irritating, right, for people that are successful. They have a lot of money. You’d like to think that you could just write a check and say, I buy a million dollars worth of love please, but it doesn’t work that way. The more you give love away, the more that you get. And from my perspective, that is why a state planning and building a legacy that lasts is the ultimate love letter. You’re passing along not only wealth, but wisdom at the end of the day. So that as we’ve mentioned, when you’re no longer there, people will miss you when you’re gone. And that’s the ultimate love letter that you can leave to your family.

So if you follow that capital strategy with discipline, you’re going to build wealth. But wealth is not the prize. The prize is becoming a sage investor, a wise steward of capital, somebody who thinks in generations, who separates bedrock capital from lifestyle capital, who transfers wisdom before wealth, who operates from an inner scorecard, who builds freedom for others, right? Who builds freedom of time, freedom of money, freedom of relationship, freedom of purpose. You can win financially and lose generationally, or you can plant trees today who seat, grow into massive oak trees that create shade that you’re never personally going to sit under. But that is a legacy that’s built to last. And if you do it correctly, when you lay your head down at night, your inner scorecard will most assuredly be satisfied. And when you’re gone, people will miss you, not because of your bank account, but because of your character, because of what you protected, because of what you passed along, because of the love letter that you wrote with your life.

So that sums it up. We’ve gone through every single one of the seven pillars of the sunrise capital strategy in detail. So on the next episode, what we’re going to do is we’re going to show you a case study, real life, real world example of what happens when you buy a property and you actually implement the entirety of that capital strategy. How does it actually play out in the real world? We’re going to do a deep dive on a real deal that’s making real money that we still own today that’s thrown off cash flow and generating legacy wealth in a tax-efficient manner, because that’s what I want for my family. And we’re going to help as many people as possible do that as we can along the way. But until next time.

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