DISCLAIMER: As an affiliate of The Wealthy Steward, we may earn a sales commission from the offerings discussed in this article. This issue is for educational purposes only and is not legal, financial, or tax advice. Please consult qualified professionals before making decisions about your business or estate.

Every once in a while, an interview comes along that reframes something most people had stopped questioning… and Seth Ellsworth's recent appearance on our Expert Interview Series was one of those moments.

Seth is a marketing veteran, father of 8 kids, and founder of The Wealthy Steward. He helps business owners restructure how they hold assets using a framework that predates the LLC, the S-Corp, and the C-Corp by several centuries. The premise might be uncomfortable at first, but for the right person, it’s freeing.

His core argument is simple: ownership is a modern construct that brings complexity, compliance, and constant exposure.

While “stewardship” - controlling assets without owning them - is older, simpler, and quietly used by some of the wealthiest families and largest organizations in America (and beyond).

This issue unpacks the highlights of that conversation.

Seth's path into this work didn't start with tax strategy. It started with a family reunion and a leather-bound business ledger that belonged to his great-grandfather.

He flipped through thousands of transactions, saw bank balances in the hundreds of thousands of dollars (in early 1900s money), and asked a question that wouldn't leave him alone:

How did my great-grandfather actually do business?

Not what tools did he use, but what structure did he use? Because it couldn't have been an LLC - those didn't exist until the late 1970s. It couldn't have been an S-Corp or a modern revocable living trust. So what was it?

When Seth started asking attorneys and CPAs, the answer was always the same: they didn't know. It hadn't been taught in law school. It wasn't in their professional resource libraries. The structures had been quietly written out of the modern curriculum.

But they had never been written out of the law.

Seth's central thesis comes down to a single observation about how the U.S. tax and legal system actually works.

He boils the entire IRS code down to one concept: a taxable event is what triggers a tax liability, and the entity tied to that event becomes the taxpayer. Ownership and the taxpayer almost always travel together. When an individual owns something, that individual is on the hook for the events it generates.

But the law never required them to travel together… They can be separated.

This is where the shift from ownership to stewardship comes in.

By moving assets into a properly structured private contract organization, the individual is no longer the owner. They retain discretion and control as a steward, but the taxable event - when it happens - sits somewhere else entirely. And when no event is triggered, no taxpayer exists for that activity.

Seth is careful to underline what this is not: a tax scheme, a loophole, an evasion strategy, or anything foreign. It is the application of contract law that has existed in this country since the Mayflower Compact in 1620 and in Roman civil code since 542 AD.

His framework rests on a legal opinion letter and the maxim that has held in U.S. courts for centuries: pacta sunt servanda - the contract makes the law.

For anyone wondering whether private contracts can really stand up to state regulation, Seth points to Allied Structural Steel v. Spannaus (1978).

In that case, a private contract predated a Minnesota state regulation that effectively overrode it. The Supreme Court didn't just side with the contract holders. It struck the Minnesota law down entirely, citing the constitutional rule that no state can pass a law impairing the obligation of a contract.

The same principle was established as far back as Dartmouth College v. Woodward in 1819. Contract first, state second.

This is the legal floor that private contract organizations stand on. It is, in Seth's words, "the most well-settled law in the history of law."

The structures Seth describes aren't theoretical. They're already in use by some of the most recognizable organizations in America - most people just don't know to look for them.

Seth also points to Jack Dorsey's reported handling of substantial Twitter-related capital gains through a structure like this - an example, of private contract structures being used in plain sight at the highest levels of M&A activity.

For readers of this newsletter, the M&A application is what makes this conversation especially worth paying attention to.

Consider how this plays out in a typical transaction:

If the entity being acquired is an LLC owned by a private contract stewardship organization rather than an individual, the deal itself doesn't change. The LLC is what's bought and sold...

But the layer above it - where proceeds land, where future control sits, where estate exposure lives - operates under a completely different set of rules than what most CPAs and attorneys are accustomed to navigating.

The implications for buyers and sellers include:

None of this is a substitute for proper deal structuring, tax planning, or legal counsel... Seth is the first to say so…

But it adds options most acquisition entrepreneurs never knew existed.

What may be most striking about Seth's conversation is what he insists isn't the point.

Taxes are not the driver… Privacy is a benefit, not the goal... The structure isn't sold on returns or savings or aggressive optimization…

The driver, in his words, is peace - the kind that comes from no longer feeling like a tenant in one's own business life, constantly asking permission from agencies, regulators, and statutes that change without notice.

His advice to anyone considering this path is unusual for a man in his line of work: follow the peace, not the fear.

If the framework doesn't bring peace, it isn't the right fit. If it does, the execution is the easy part.

The interview summarized above is the introduction…

The deeper dive into how these private contract stewardship organizations are structured are covered in the follow-up masterclass, called “Untouchable Profits.”

In the 2.5 hour masterclass, Seth walks us through:

For acquisition entrepreneurs, investors, and business owners who have ever felt the friction Seth describes - the sense that something about the modern ownership model just doesn't sit right - the masterclass is the next step:

👉 Get access to Seth's full video masterclass for just $27 by tapping HERE.

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