Managing Tech Millions

After my company went public, 90% of my net worth was sitting in one stock. Then came the lockup. I couldn’t sell a single share, so I just watched. Every day, almost everything my family had moved up and down with one ticker.

Most people in that spot start with one question: should I sell? It’s the wrong first question. It pushes you into all or nothing: sell everything, or hold everything and hope. The better question is what you actually want that money to do.

In this episode, I’ll walk you through the fo...

For years, I asked one question about every investment: will this grow my wealth? Friends brought me public companies. Old coworkers brought me startups. Cold emails showed up with decks attached. I spent evenings and weekends running numbers, and I ended up with a portfolio of yeses that never worked together.

Wealthy families ask something different: does this fit what we’re building? That one question lets them say no to almost every investment that crosses their desk, and they don’t feel like they’re missing out.

I’ll walk you through the three filters...

Is a Micro Family Office Worth It at $5 Million?

When I passed $5 million in net worth, I had a house, private equity investments, a portfolio I was starting to build, and an estate plan that wasn’t finished. I was paying a lot in taxes every year. None of it was working together. I had a portfolio, but I wasn’t the CEO of it.

Most people I talk to at this level ask the same question: can I afford a family office? That’s the wrong question. And this was never about firing your financ...

At five million dollars, everyone tells you you’ve won. That you can rest easy. That’s not what it felt like to me.

When my company went public in 2012, I had multiple seven figures overnight, almost all of it in one stock. On paper I’d made it. In practice, I’d walked into a new game, and the rules didn’t come printed on the box.

At this level, your wealth stops being a number. It becomes a business. And for most people, nobody is running it.

I walk through the six rules...

Too Wealthy for Generic Advice. Too Small for a Family Office.

Building wealth is one skill. Managing it across investments, taxes, legal structures, and generations is an entirely different discipline. Yet if your net worth sits between mass-market advice and a traditional family office, the financial industry often leaves you with scattered accounts, generic recommendations, and no real operating system.

I know that gap because I lived it. After years of studying how the world’s wealthiest families preserve and compound capital, I built a lean version for my own family: a Micro Family Office. It...

You're great at growing your wealth. You earned the equity, maybe rode an IPO, and watched the number climb. Now ask yourself how you manage it. If you're where I was, the answer is spreadsheets, accounts scattered everywhere, and a few investments with no real purpose behind them.

That changed for me after my first IPO, in a conversation with my friend Marco. He's the chief investment officer of a single family office worth billions, and talking with him changed how I saw my own money.

Family offices go back much further than you'd guess...

Most people think a family office only makes sense once you have $100 million. The right structure makes it work at $1 million.

I spent 10 years studying how the ultra-wealthy manage their money, then built my own family office from scratch. Every family office, whether it manages $50 million or $5 billion, runs on the same 7 components. Same principles, scaled execution.

I break down all 7 and show how each one scales for someone with $1 million to $30 million. You'll see why most portfolios look like a junk drawer once you map them out, which component people overlook even though it...

What I'd Do Differently With My First $500,000

Between 2013 and 2018 I deployed $530,000 across nine investments while I was still working full time in tech. It worked. That capital paid me real income from the first year, and it became the foundation of the portfolio that now generates around $200,000 a year.

It also took far more work than it needed to.

I've put millions to work since then, and I've watched which decisions hold up across cycles and which ones only worked once. Standing at that same crossroads today, with the same $500,000 and the same...

If you're sitting on $1 to $30 million, the wealth management industry has left you stranded. You've outgrown basic personal finance advice. You're not rich enough for the family offices built for the ultra-wealthy. So you end up managing millions the way most people manage thousands.

I lived in that gap. Former tech CIO, concentrated equity, no playbook. Today I run a $7 million portfolio on a system I call the Micro Family Office, and in this video I walk you through how to build one.

The strategic advantages billionaire families have used for decades don't require a $100...

Most advisors hand you the same plan. Accumulate for 30 years, then withdraw 4% a year and hope the math holds. I ran that plan through real numbers in this video: the taxes, the sequence risk, the principal you liquidate every year to pay yourself. It's a water tank you drain while praying it rains again.

Ultra-wealthy families operate differently. I've sat on both sides of the table, as a GP allocating capital and an LP writing checks, and today my portfolio covers my family's essential expenses without touching the principal.

The difference comes down to the...

In 2012 I had millions in the bank and no income strategy. Every advisor told me the same thing: 60/40 portfolio, 4% rule, you're set for life.

Then I went and read the research behind that rule. It comes from a 1994 study, and what it leaves out is the thing that can end a retirement in the first three years.

So I spent the next decade studying how ultra-wealthy families actually pay for their lives. I interviewed Chief Investment Officers at Single Family Offices and took their portfolio structures apart. What I found made me angry. The strategy...

In 2012 my company IPO'd and I watched my net worth go up $3 million in a matter of minutes. A few days later I sat down with a Morgan Stanley advisor expecting a playbook. I got 30 minutes of the same recommendation he gives someone with $100K in a 401(k): 90% stocks and bonds, 10% cash.

He wasn't a bad advisor. He was giving me the only thing the industry is built to give someone at my level.

That's how I found the financial dead zone. Retail finance serves people under $1 million. Family offices serve people over $100 million. If...

You Don't Need $100M to Run a Family Office

If your net worth sits between one and thirty million, you already have investments. What you're missing is the system that grows them, protects them, and passes them down. That gap separates owning a portfolio from running a family office.

The wealthiest families in the world run their money like a business. Every family office operates on the same components, whether it's running five million or five hundred million. Miss one and the whole thing gets shaky.

In this video I walk through each...

Most first-generation wealth doesn't survive the handoff. The investments were usually fine. The problem is that everything holding it together lives in your head. The strategy, the reasoning, the relationships, the plan for what happens next.

In tech we call that a single point of failure. Right now, that's you.

The Rockefellers solved this in 1882, and their family office still runs 140 years later. Their heirs got more than assets. They got the thing that keeps wealth alive after the person who built it is gone.

In this video I walk through the three...

The moment your wealth becomes worth protecting is the exact moment the financial industry stops serving you. Too complex for retail advice. Too small for the family office built for hundred-million-dollar fortunes. Welcome to the service desert—where defending everything you've built falls to one person. You.

And here's what nobody warns you about: your wealth isn't facing one threat. It's facing four, all at once. The market that built it. The world that can sue you for it. The IRS that quietly drains it every single year. And time itself, which decides whether any of it ou...

Most retirement advice tells you to survive market swings with more diversification, more bonds, more cash on the sidelines. I'm going to show you why that entire premise is backwards.

Here's the uncomfortable truth: a 20% drop doesn't hurt you. Being forced to sell into that drop does. And the traditional retirement model all but guarantees that moment arrives. There's even a name for it in the research, and two retirees with the identical average return can have wildly different outcomes based on nothing but timing.

In this video, I put two models side by side...

If you have between one and thirty million dollars, you've probably done what almost everyone does: handed it to an advisor, paid the fee, and hoped the money outlasts you. That's the 99%. And it's not your fault—no one ever handed you the playbook.

The ultra-wealthy don't hope. For over a century they've used a specific structure to run their wealth like a business built to outlast them. Not a better stock pick. Not a better advisor. A better structure.

I'm Christopher Nelson. I left a tech career, built my own Micro Family Office, and le...

Most first-generation wealth builders make the same move: they cross the million-dollar threshold and immediately ask "where should I invest?" That question is the trap. And it's costing you more than you realize.

In this conversation, I sit down with Marco Quevedo—my friend from our UCSD days, a Wharton MBA, and now the Chief Investment Officer of a nine-figure family office. Marco has helped start multiple family offices from scratch, and he walks through exactly how billion-dollar operations architect their wealth—goals before thesis, thesis before allocation.

Here's what surprised me most: the best inve...

I Ranked Every Income Investment, Best to Worst — One Popular Pick Got an F

Most income advice gets one thing backwards: it ranks investments as if there's a single right answer for everyone. There isn't.

So I did something different. I took every income vehicle worth knowing — annuities, covered call ETFs, private credit, REITs, syndications, BDCs, muni bonds, the ones your advisor pitches and the ones they've never mentioned — and I graded all of them, S through F.

But here's the catch that changes everything: I graded them for one specific investor. $5 million, five y...

The Truth About Covered Call ETFs Nobody Tells You

Covered call ETFs might be the most blindly bought income product on the market right now. And almost everyone picks the same way: they chase the biggest yield number on the website.

Here's what that number won't tell you. The yield is what you receive. It says nothing about what you actually keep. I learned this the hard way when I started moving capital into these funds—capital that's part of a portfolio generating over $200,000 a year in income. I nearly made several expensive mistakes myself. I...

You're Too Big for the App—and Too Small for the Family Office

If your net worth sits somewhere between one and thirty million dollars, you're stuck in a place nobody built for you. Too big for the retail app on your phone. Too small for the single family office running things for the ultra-wealthy. So you default to the only option anyone ever handed you: give it all to an advisor, pay the fee year after year, and watch the accounts draw down—until the money runs out, or you do.

There's a second path...

You Don't Need a Better Advisor. You Need a Better Structure.

As your wealth grows — one million to two, two to five — you outgrow your financial advisor. So you go hunting for a unicorn: the one advisor who'll finally get it. I did the same thing after my first IPO watched my net worth jump to $3.3 million. Every firm came back with the same cookie-cutter pitch and the same 1% fee.

Here's what took me years to understand: if you're between $1 and $30 million, the problem was never your advisor. You're stuck in a place the industry simp...

Most people think they're in charge of their money. They're not.

If you have a financial advisor telling you what to buy, when to worry, and what your goals should be — and you're nodding along — you're not running your wealth. You're an employee in a business you own.

I'm not saying fire your advisor. I'm saying something different. There's a specific seat you should be sitting in, and right now, someone else is sitting in it for you. Most people never see this until it's too late.

In 50 seconds, I break down the role...

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...

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 mana...

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 thro...

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 th...

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 righ...

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.

...

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 $7...

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 type...

🔴 Free LIVE Workshop - April 1st at 8pm ET / 5pm PT⁣⁣

Learn how to architect your own "Micro Family Office". Apply at https://dub.sh/wealthops

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Most investors in the $1M–$30M range are using one or two income assets.

There are fifteen — and the ones that often generate the highest yield are usually the ones your advisor never brings up.

In this video, I walk through a complete map of every income asset category available, how each one works, a...

Join me for The WealthOps Way—our free live masterclass designed to help you stop guessing and start running your wealth like a business.

You’ll go from scattered to strategic as you craft your own Portfolio Thesis—the foundation of everything that follows.

👉 In just one session, you’ll:

When? 📆 April 1st at 7pm to 9pm (Central US)

Join me for The WealthOps Way—our free live masterclass designed to help you stop guessing and start running your wealth like a business.

You’ll go from scattered to strategic as you craft your own Portfolio Thesis—the foundation of everything that follows.

👉 In just one session, you’ll:

When? 📆 March 18th at 7pm to 9pm (Central US)

Apply Now

A few years ago, I had what most people would consider a well-structured fin...

Join me for The WealthOps Way—our free live masterclass designed to help you stop guessing and start running your wealth like a business.

You’ll go from scattered to strategic as you craft your own Portfolio Thesis—the foundation of everything that follows.

👉 In just one session, you’ll:

When? 📆 March 18th at 7pm to 9pm (Central US)

One of the biggest myths in wealth management is that once you reach $1M in net worth, the...

Have you ever wondered how the wealthiest investors structure their portfolios? In this week’s episode, I break down the actual portfolio composition of the top 0.1% of investors — and why their approach is fundamentally different from the traditional advice you’re probably getting.

Here’s what you’ll learn:

Join me for The WealthOps Way—our free live masterclass designed to help you stop guessing and start running your wealth like a business.

You’ll go from scattered to strategic as you craft your own Portfolio Thesis—the foundation of everything that follows.

👉 In just one session, you’ll:

When? 📆 February 25th at 7pm to 9pm (Central US)

Most family offices manage the wealth of ultra-wealthy families, but what if I told you that...

Between 2020 and 2025, the U.S. added more than two million new millionaires.

But in 2026, hitting the million-dollar mark doesn’t mean what it used to. And the gap between the average millionaire and the true top 1% is far wider — and far more structural — than most people realize.

In this week’s episode, I break down the actual net worth thresholds for the top 10%, top 5%, and top 1% — and more importantly, how wealth is structured at each level.

Because wealth doesn’t scale linearly.

It transforms structurally.

If you’ve been researching how wealthy families manage money, you’ve probably come across two terms over and over again: the Family Bank (also known as Infinite Banking) and the Micro Family Office.

Most people assume they’re basically the same thing.

They’re not.

In this video, I break down the real difference between these two approaches—and why confusing them often leads high-net-worth professionals to buy financial products when what they actually need is infrastructure.

You’ll learn why one is simply a tool, while the other is a full operati...

Join me for The WealthOps Way—our free live masterclass designed to help you stop guessing and start running your wealth like a business.

You’ll go from scattered to strategic as you craft your own Portfolio Thesis—the foundation of everything that follows.

👉 In just one session, you’ll:

When? 📆 February 25th at 7pm to 9pm (Central US)

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I’ve spent the last 10 years studying how ultra-wealthy families build and protect the...