Palm Beach County ranked first among all US counties for net inflow of adjusted gross income from domestic migration, at $3.04bn in tax year 2023, according to a MIAMI REALTORS analysis of IRS Statistics of Income data published on 24 March 2026. The people arriving brought money and, with it, a queue of introductions. Tommy Shields, Head of Investor Relations at Onyx Reserve, spends most of his working week in first conversations with people who have been approached by a dozen other firms that month.
What follows is an edited exchange about what those conversations sound like, why the first one matters more than the tenth, and what he thinks is being tested when someone new sits down.
Q. Research cited by Nicole Pullen Ross, who heads Goldman Sachs’ Sports and Entertainment Solutions, found that athletes lost nearly $974m to fraud over the ten years ending 2024, with 40% of that loss falling in the last six years, as reported by Fortune on 10 May 2026. Does that history sit in the room during a first meeting?
“It sits in the room whether anyone names it or not. Someone who has watched a friend lose money to a person with a good story is not being difficult when they ask a blunt question in the first ten minutes. They are being sensible, and the correct response is to answer the question rather than to admire it. The worst thing a first conversation can contain is charm deployed as a substitute for an answer.”
Q. Sports Illustrated reported in 2009 that 78% of former NFL players had gone bankrupt or were in financial distress within two years of retirement, a figure attributed to no study at all. The peer-reviewed correction, NBER Working Paper 21085 by Carlson, Kim, Lusardi and Camerer, published on 13 April 2015, used federal bankruptcy court records for players drafted between 1996 and 2003 and found 15.7% had filed by year 12 after retirement and only about 1.9% within two years. How much does a wrong number in circulation change a conversation?
“A number that travels for fifteen years without a source behind it does real damage, because the person sitting opposite has usually heard it and half believes it about themselves. Correcting it is not a favour, it is just accuracy, and accuracy early on is the cheapest trust anyone will ever buy. A first conversation should contain the things that are actually known and an honest account of the things that are not.”
Q. What should a first conversation not contain?
“A recommendation. Nobody can responsibly recommend anything to a person whose obligations, timelines and temperament they learned about forty minutes ago. The first conversation is for finding out what someone is actually worried about at two in the morning, which is rarely what they open with. If a meeting ends with a proposal on the table, it was a sales call wearing a different jacket.”
Q. Wells Fargo announced on 20 January 2026 that it will move the headquarters of its wealth and investment management division to One Flagler in West Palm Beach, taking 50,000 sq ft and relocating about 100 employees including senior executives by the end of 2026, according to CoStar News. The Business Development Board of Palm Beach County counts about 10 companies that moved their headquarters into the county in the first two months of 2026 alone. With that many arrivals settling in at once, how often should an investor expect to hear from the people looking after their money?
“Often enough that a phone call is never itself an event. If the sound of someone’s name on a voicemail makes a person’s stomach drop, the rhythm was wrong long before whatever happened this week. Regular contact when nothing is happening is what makes contact possible when something is. A county that picks up ten headquarters in two months also picks up a great many people who will introduce themselves this spring and be somewhere else by the next one, and from the outside the only thing that separates the two is time. Someone who checks the ground before agreeing to anything is easier to work with over ten years than someone who is delighted on the first afternoon.”
Q. What does an honest bad-news call sound like?
“Short, and early, and not on email. Bad news travels better in person because the person receiving it needs to watch a face while they hear it, and because the second and third questions are the ones that matter and nobody asks those in writing. Written first, an explanation reads as a defence no matter how it is worded. Said out loud, it can just be what happened.”
Q. The Business Development Board of Palm Beach County says more than 300 hedge funds and other financial services firms are located in the county, on an industry page last modified on 20 July 2026. The people running them meet each other at private dinners and small events. What is that circuit actually worth?
“A room full of people who are not selling anything is the most useful room there is, and it is rare. Most events are a trade show with better food. The valuable version is a dinner where two people compare notes on a decision one of them made badly, in front of witnesses, because that conversation cannot happen anywhere a pitch is expected. Reputation in a place like this is decided in those rooms and it is decided slowly.”
Q. UBS surveyed 307 family offices holding $627.4bn in total wealth between January and March 2026 for its Global Family Office Report 2026 and found only 35% have a defined succession plan. In practice, what do people ask about first when they sit down?
“Not performance. Almost never performance, in the first hour. They ask who calls them when something goes wrong, and how quickly, and whether that person will be the one who answers the phone in four years or a name they have never met. Those are questions about process and about staying power, and answering them plainly is more persuasive than anything else available.”
