Today, I'm excited to speak with Max Youngquist, family office structuring and governance leader at RSM, a leading global assurance, tax, and consulting firm.

Max focuses on offering holistic services and solutions for family offices, covering complex tax compliance, structuring, and planning, as well as estate and gift, wealth transfer, and succession planning. He has consulted with individual family members about their many personal financial matters and concierge needs and supported their personal businesses and hobbies.

Prior to RSM, Max held various senior positions at Henry Crown & Company and Ernst & Young. Max and his firm RSM are valued advisor members of FOX, and we are fortunate to have their expertise as part of our membership community.

We start by discussing the very common model where most family offices start – the embedded single-family office (SFO). Max offers his definition of an embedded SFO and describes its common characteristics. He goes over the top reasons to transition away from an embedded SFO, and offers his insights on when, why, and how families should consider unembedding their family office.

Max delves in detail into what is absolutely needed at a minimum for a family to be able to make a successful transition from an embedded SFO and covers the "core" functional elements of an unembedded SFO.

Max provides invaluable tips on how to best design and administer the family office functions to ensure a smooth launch of the unembedded SFO and talks about some best practices to emulate and common mistakes to avoid.

Enjoy this highly instructive dialog with one of the prominent practitioners and thought leaders in the niche realm of family office design and operations.