If you've built a seven — or even eight-figure net worth but still find yourself approaching wealth with a middle-class mindset, you're not alone — and it’s costing you.

I’ve worked with countless high earners who’ve mastered complexity in their careers, yet when it comes to managing their personal wealth, they unknowingly fall back on outdated strategies designed for $50k incomes. This mindset trap often leads to massive opportunity loss, increased risk, and delayed financial freedom.

Here’s the harsh truth: you can't build generational wealth using accumulation strategies built for retirement consumption. That “buy and hold forever” mentality, the obsession with minimizing fees, or blindly sticking with 60/40 portfolios—these are small-money strategies being misapplied to big-money problems.

In this content, I break down the key differences between a middle-class money mindset and wealth-building thinking: how to allocate assets, reduce taxes, generate passive income, and build your own Micro Family Office.

Most people don’t realize this, but the same wealth strategy that helps you build your first $100K is exactly what holds you back at $1M. And once you hit $5M? That strategy can actually become a risk.

In this episode, you'll learn why your financial approach must evolve as your net worth grows—and how staying in your comfort zone could be costing you millions.

We break down the key mindset and strategy shifts that should happen at three major milestones: $100K, $1 million, and $5 million. If you’re using the same tactics at every stage, you’re likely plateauing without even realizing it.

Here’s what you’ll discover:

• Why the Foundation Phase isn’t just about saving and budgeting—it’s about building the habits of a wealth CEO
• What changes once you hit $1M and become an accredited investor
• How to run your wealth like a business once you pass the $5M mark
• The most common (and costly) mistakes people make at each phase

This isn’t financial theory or Wall Street jargon. It’s a practical roadmap to upgrade your systems, your thinking, and your execution—so your money actually works for you.

Once you understand what’s needed at each level, you’ll never look at wealth building the same way again.

Every year, headlines spark outrage when names like Donald Trump, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Michael Bloomberg, and George Soros appear alongside one shocking number: $0 in federal income taxes.

Most people assume this must be illegal, or at the very least, reserved for those with tens of billions of dollars. But here’s the truth: it’s 100% legal, and the real tragedy isn’t that billionaires pay too little—it’s that most high earners are paying way too much.

After three IPOs and more than a decade studying wealth management, I’ve discovered that the strategies billionaires use aren’t out of reach. In fact, anyone with $1–30 million in net worth can start applying these techniques today to cut their tax bills by six figures every single year.

In this post, I break down the four core strategies billionaires use to protect and grow their wealth:

1. The Buy, Borrow, Die Method – How Bezos avoids selling stock, sidesteps capital gains, and borrows at low rates while compounding his wealth.
2. Strategic Tax-Loss Harvesting – How Elon Musk offset millions in gains by strategically realizing losses, and how you can use the same approach with concentrated stock positions.
3. Real Estate Depreciation – Trump’s favorite tool, using paper losses from real estate to wipe out taxable income—even while properties grow in value.
4. Debt Structuring & Interest Deductions – How Bloomberg and Soros borrow to invest, deduct interest, and unlock preferential tax treatment on returns.

Here’s the surprising part: you don’t need billions to use these strategies. Whether you have a $3M stock portfolio, a few rental properties, or a concentrated equity position from your tech career, these same principles apply.

I’ll also share a real-world example from a tech executive client who was paying $400K annually in taxes before implementing these strategies. By restructuring his investments and tax planning, he cut his bill by $175K in the first year alone—and those savings compound year after year.

The bottom line is this: these tax strategies are not loopholes. They’re intentional incentives built into the tax code to encourage investment, growth, and entrepreneurship. The only question is whether you’ll take advantage of them—or continue overpaying out of habit and misinformation.

If you want to learn how to systematically implement these methods and manage your wealth like a business, I’ve created the WealthOps framework—a step-by-step system to build your own micro family office.

If your net worth is between $1M and $30M, chances are you’re stuck in the financial dead zone. You’ve outgrown basic financial advice, but you're still not being served by the exclusive strategies reserved for ultra-wealthy families.

That’s exactly why I created the Wealth Ops Framework — a practical system that lets you operate like a full-scale family office, without needing $100M or a full-time staff.

The structure is built around three simple phases:

1. Architect – Define your strategy through a clear legacy statement and investment thesis.
2. Build – Create a business structure for your portfolio, assemble fractional specialists, and set up an operational launch plan.
3. Run – Manage your wealth with a predictable rhythm, track results, and make smart decisions based on data.

The focus is on cash flow generation, tax efficiency, and scalable growth. And it’s all done at a fraction of the cost of a traditional family office — with far more control.

Once the system is in place, it takes just 8 to 12 hours per month to keep everything running smoothly. You step into the role of CEO of your wealth, making strategic decisions with clarity, metrics, and momentum.

There are 70 million millionaires in the world — but only about 30,000 qualify for a single family office with a $100M minimum. That means 99.95% of millionaires are either stuck in the wrong wealth management system or don’t even realize there’s a better way.

Most people think you need a huge fortune and a full-time team to manage wealth like the ultra-rich. But that’s just not true.

A single family office gives full control and privacy, but the $2–$5M annual cost makes it impractical unless you're in the top 0.01%. On the other hand, multi-family offices offer shared resources, but you lose control, customization, and still pay high fees — often hundreds of thousands per year — for cookie-cutter strategies designed for groups, not individuals.

That’s why the micro family office exists — and why it’s the best-kept secret for the 99% of millionaires with $1M to $30M in net worth.

This lean, strategic model allows full control over wealth decisions while leveraging top-tier experts only when needed. No bloated payroll, no compromises, no “one-size-fits-all” plans. You become the CEO of your financial future, using battle-tested systems to manage everything from investments to tax planning to estate strategy — tailored entirely to your goals.

I personally cut over $200,000 in annual wealth management costs by building my own micro family office. Instead of outsourcing control, I built a flexible and scalable framework that adapts to my life, grows with my wealth, and delivers real results — faster and with greater clarity.

The truth is, most millionaires are still using wealth management models built for a world that no longer exists. Today, the best strategy is one that runs like a business: efficient, data-driven, and designed for your unique situation. You don’t need $100M to do it — just the right framework.

👉 Have $1-$30m net worth and want to run your wealth like a business?

Click here to learn how to build your own "micro family office": https://wealthops.io

70% of wealthy families lose everything by the second generation. I could be one of them.

I’m Christopher Nelson, and despite building a $7M cash-flowing portfolio and going through three tech IPOs, none of it prepared me for the realization that I might be raising kids who would destroy it all.

Living in Silicon Hills—Austin’s tech bubble—my three sons were growing up in luxury, worried more about iPad batteries than anything real. Like many high-earning parents, I thought I was doing enough: financial literacy apps, savings accounts, investment talks. But I realized I was actually creating entitled kids, not financially responsible ones.

That’s when everything changed.

Eight years ago, I was stuck in a Manhattan office despite having millions in the bank. Today, I’m unemployed by choice because my portfolio—40% private equity—covers all my living expenses. But before you jump into private equity, you need to know the four benefits that convinced me to invest heavily… and the four costly mistakes that nearly wiped me out.

What if you could generate over $250,000 in annual income from a $3 million portfolio — without selling assets and paying less than $10,000 in taxes?

That’s exactly what I’ve structured through the Evergreen Income Framework, designed for people who feel stuck in the middle: too wealthy for typical advisors, but not quite large enough for traditional family offices. If you’re sitting on $1 million to $30 million in assets, you’ve likely felt this gap.

Most financial advice follows the outdated growth and drawdown model — work for decades, invest in index funds, then start selling pieces of your portfolio to fund retirement. The problem? You expose yourself to inflation, market volatility, and eventually asset depletion.

Instead, I focus on asset operation, not accumulation. The Evergreen model targets income-producing investments:

• Private equity real estate like commercial buildings, self-storage, and mobile home parks
• Private credit offering monthly cash flow
• Energy infrastructure with special tax advantages

These assets generate strong cash-on-cash returns, typically in the 8–12% range. Combined with smart tax strategies — such as depreciation and depletion allowances — it’s possible to reduce your effective tax rate to as low as 3–5%.

I also walk through risk management, diversification across geography and asset types, and maintaining liquidity buffers for both safety and opportunity. With a clear operational cadence, including quarterly income reviews and annual rebalancing, the goal is to create a system that generates predictable income and long-term wealth.

This is exactly how ultra-wealthy families operate. The difference isn’t just the assets — it’s the system. They build family offices to manage investments, taxes, risk, and estate planning as one unified platform. But until now, those tools were only accessible to those with $50M+.

That’s why I created the Micro Family Office framework — bringing the same structure to professionals managing between $1M and $30M.

This includes:

• Investment architecture to access private markets
• A tax engine that integrates with your estate planning
• Operational infrastructure for performance tracking and decision-making
• A continuous improvement loop with quarterly reviews and market updates

If you’ve built a career mastering complex systems, this approach makes sense: treat your wealth like a business, with reliable income, strong risk management, and a structure that can be passed on for generations.

You’re not just creating a portfolio — you’re building a financial engine designed to grow, compound, and operate independently of public market swings.