Case studies · from the book
Five families, one decade, and the paper that separated them
The families that run through Think Like a Family Office — from a $4 million kitchen table to a $1.8 billion platform — show what the disciplines look like at every size. One of them shows what happens without them.
About the illustrative families: The Whitman Family Office, the Ashford Group, the Dawson family, and the Reyes Family Trust, together with the Calloway family, are composites constructed by the author for teaching purposes. They are not actual clients, and any resemblance to actual families is coincidental. Dollar figures, allocations and outcomes are illustrative teaching constructs, not the results of any Vistamark client, and are not a promise of any result.
The families
Find the balance sheet closest to yours
The order is about complexity, not worth. Each case links the decisions to the chapters that explain them — and to the Vistamark practice that does the same work for real families.
Why composites
Real patterns, no real names
Advisers cannot publish client stories without consent, and a family that consents rarely tells the whole truth. So the book does what case method has always done: it recombines decades of real decisions — the P&L that surprised a founder, the branch that wanted to sell the building, the conference call where the loudest voice prevailed — into families that never existed, so the lessons can be told completely.
Vistamark’s VistaWealth Office™ applies the same disciplines for families with $10 million to several hundred million: the four-flows investment policy, the family P&L and spending policy, after-tax allocation through VistaBuilder™, private markets pacing, governance calendars and the continuity rehearsal. If one of these families sounds like yours, that is the conversation to have.
Which family is closest to yours?
A partner will tell you which chapters matter first — and honestly whether you need us at all.