Marcia Nelson organizes tailored family office events as managing director at Freedom Capital Markets, an investment banking and equity capital markets firm. Nelson’s background includes working with family offices as well as connecting private investors to direct deal flow. She is also a founding partner of Triple C Advisory, helping early-stage companies prepare for institutional-grade investments.
How do you work with family offices in your current role?
I run conferences for families, meeting with family offices and bringing my relationships together to help them source co-investment opportunities and helping them get to know each other.
I organize curated peer-to-peer events to create a safe space for families, speakers and attendees. We try to make them fun and relevant, so we’re going to the Daytona Rolex 24-hour Racing Weekend with 30 family offices and sports, transport and mobility businesses. They’re just coming together to enjoy the weekend — no sales pitches. It’s about forming and deepening relationships.
I also host monthly curated lunches for family offices. We just started First Friday, where we invite different people to a Zoom networking session the first Friday of each month. We bring six to 12 people together who all share some kind of connection or common thread.
What trends or shifts are you seeing in family offices?
When I first started working in the family office world, it was a lot about wealth preservation and philanthropy. Everybody wanted to get their 6% a year. I saw this shift to families taking more control over their wealth. In addition, they also want to ensure that the entrepreneurial spirit that created the wealth in the first place is nurtured in the second and third generation.
What are families doing to cultivate entrepreneurship in the next generation?
More and more, family officers are saying: "I made my money. I'm an entrepreneur, and I don't want to take that experience away from the next generation." Sometimes money can take that experience away.
One of the ways families encourage independence and entrepreneurship is through a family bank, where members seeking to fund a business or investment have to come to the investment committee with due diligence and make a solid case. Due to the rigorous process, some may find it easier not to utilize the family bank, which cultivates independence.
How are family offices structuring internal educational programs to better prepare the next generation?
One family office created different board levels — one for the first and second generation and a junior board for the third generation. When members turn 14 years old, they join the junior board, which operates with guidance from a more senior family member. The junior board meets monthly, and members are given an allocation of capital for investment and philanthropy. It’s a way for the third generation to collaborate rather than compete with each other. There’s a lot of emotionality in wealth inheritance, so allowing everyone an equal role in the junior board creates an equal playing field.
Another family put the next generation on the board of the philanthropy arm as a training ground to then take over the family office board. I'm seeing more first and second generations being more specific and intentional about how to make sure the next generation moves forward.
What advice can you offer for effective networking?
There are a lot of events — so many that it can be overwhelming. So if you’re a first-gen wealth creator looking for places to go, try a couple of events and ask peers where they’re spending their time. That will help avoid conferences that may not be appropriate. It’s also a great icebreaker.