FOXcast

George Kinder, founder of The Kinder Institute of Life Planning, discusses the concept of 'Fiduciary in All Things' (FIAT) and its benefits for society. He elaborates on the 'Three Domains of Freedom' in financial life planning and offers practical tips for family leaders. Kinder also explores mindfulness in financial planning, emphasizing its transformative power in personal and professional life.

Today, I am pleased to welcome Wesly Pate, Senior Portfolio Manager at Income Research + Management (IR+M), a bond management firm specializing in US fixed income for both institutional and private wealth clients. In his role, Wesly is focused on portfolio construction, sector analysis, and contributing to the investment decision-making process, and works closely with IR+M’s wealth management team and family office clients. Wesly starts by sharing his views on the macroeconomic context in which we find ourselves today. IR+M specializes in fixed-income instruments (bonds in particular), and we find ourselves in a relatively high-interest environment for the first time in decades. Wesly talks about how and why bonds are performing strongly or positioned to add value to investors’ portfolios right now. He then looks at the current macro environment from the perspective of family enterprises and family offices. IR+M is itself a family-owned, multigenerational business, so Wesly and the firm leadership are no strangers to the needs, priorities, and investment mindset of family enterprises. Wesly shares hid views on the opportunities, ideas, and actions family offices and family enterprise CIOs should be considering in today’s environment. Wesly then offers some practical tools and tips for family offices, active investors, and family enterprise CIOs, highlighting some great analytical tools and methods, such as breakeven analyses and studying changes in relevant value and suggesting how family offices should be thinking about them and utilizing them. Finally, Wesly provides his insights into what he sees families and family offices are currently doing with fixed income and bonds in their portfolios and offers some suggestions on the investment strategies they should be considering or activating in the current context. Please enjoy this timely and instructive conversation with a deep expert in an asset class that has renewed relevance and potential impact on family investment portfolios today.

This week, I’m speaking with Leslie Michelson, Chairman and Co-Founder of Private Health Management (PHM). PHM is a clinically sophisticated complex care management company, specializing in assisting clients to obtain the best care and outcomes when facing serious and complex medical conditions. Before founding PHM, Leslie was the CEO and Vice Chairman of the Prostate Cancer Foundation, and he’s the author of the New York Times bestseller, The Patient’s Playbook. Leslie, and his firm PHM, are marketing partners of FOX and valuable contributors of unique, expertise to our member community, and we are thrilled to offer their specialized knowledge and thought leadership to our members. Leslie shares his reflections, based on his decades of experience, on how UHNW clients, who ostensibly have the resources to afford any level of service and care, still find it a challenge to gain access to and receive good medical care. He also points to a unique and intriguing aspect of being a client or advisor in the family wealth space – which is that clients in this niche corner of the wealth management industry are families, and as such, they share common heritage and genetics. And that is important for families and family leaders to know as they seek to improve the collective health and well-being of their family members. Leslie offers some practical tips and suggestions for UHNW clients who are facing or dealing with a serious diagnosis, condition, or illness in the family, and provides a simple and time-tested recipe for the steps should they take and the resources they should seek out. He also has some sound advice and useful resources for families whose members are blessed with good health at present, but the family and the family leaders wish to be proactive and better prepared for all eventualities and for any medical situations or emergencies family members may face. Don’t miss this highly practical conversation with one of the long-time thought leaders and practitioners in the health and wellness profession focused on serving UHNW families and all their members.

Today, I am delighted to speak with Dr. Richard Orlando, Founder of Legacy Capitals, a leading provider of training, coaching, and consulting services on topics such as wealth and values transfer, preparing the rising generation, family governance, legacy planning, and family philanthropy to financially successful families & family businesses, wealth advisors, family offices, and financial institutions. Richard is an approved instructor for the Investments & Wealth Institute’s Certified Private Wealth Advisor (CPWA) Certification Program, a faculty member of the UHNW Institute, holds a certificate in family wealth advising from the Family Firm Institute, and is certified as a professional coach by the International Coach Federation’s accredited program. In his practice serving UHNW clients, Richard uses the terms “love your client” and “whole family advisory” to describe his approach and philosophy of working with families of wealth. He explains what he means by these terms and shares his definition of a whole family advisor. Richard and his firm work with both family clients and their trusted advisors, and he talks about how this “whole family advisor” mindset impacts both sides of this professional relationship. He unpacks what families need to know about finding and working with a whole family advisor and what advisors need to know and do to become one. In his book, Legacy: The Hidden Keys to Optimizing Your Family Wealth Decisions, Richard outlines and explores the five most important family wealth questions, or decisions, that directly impact families and their legacies. He delves into these five questions and explains how families and advisors should make practical use of them. Richard also shares several legacy tools – for facilitating meetings, communicating effectively, planning, etc. – that he utilizes in his work with clients and offers some tips on how family principals and family advisors can best make use of them. Please enjoy this highly instructive conversation with a longtime practitioner and leading coach and educator in the family wealth and well-being space.

Aggie Johnson, founder of WillKate, discusses the challenges and opportunities enterprise families face, emphasizing the importance of a multidisciplinary approach to wealth and advising. She introduces the '6-element focus' framework and highlights the concept of 'central purpose' to strengthen family unity and achieve strategic goals through introspection and personal growth.

Today, I am excited to speak with Mitchell Spearman, relationship builder and advisor to multigenerational families and family office leaders. Through his work, Mitchell helps his clients build deeper ties and meaningful connectivity through curated moments and transformational experiences. Mitchell’s career started in higher learning, and as an educator, he embraced the concept of High Impact Practices that, as research has shown, can generate stronger engagement with students and deliver lasting educational impact. Mitchels explains what High Impact Practices are and how they are applied by teachers and learning institutions. He then talks about how these same High Impact Practices can be adapted to the world of wealth management, and particularly to the field of advising multigenerational UHNW families. To bring this into practice, Mitchell offers a range of tips and suggestions for families interested in learning and applying the High Impact Practices approach in their day-to-day communication, engagement, and work with their family members or their family enterprise or family office staff. He also provides useful pointers to family advisors and service providers across different disciplines on how they can borrow from and apply High Impact Practices in their work and interactions with their UHNW family clients. Enjoy this highly relevant conversation with one the most passionate, energetic, and positively engaging family advisors in our space.

This week, I have the pleasure of speaking with Laura Dale-Harris, Founder of Global Treehouse Foundation, a unique nonprofit organization, established by a prominent European enterprise family – Isabella Seragnolli’s family in Bologna, Italy – and dedicated to improving access to pediatric palliative care for children around the world. Laura talks about the origins and mission of Global Treehouse Foundation, which is a great case study for a mission-driven philanthropic foundation that was born out of a family’s own vision and value system and was spun out from the family office. Laura shares some insights about this process of creating a new and separate non-profit organization that first originated inside the family office. Laura then delves into the incredible work of the Global Treehouse Foundation, bringing the topic of palliative – or end-of-life – care into focus. Like so many qualitative, human topics that are of such great importance and consequence in the lives of families and their family members, the topic of death and end-of-life care is often treated as taboo and even avoided. The topic rarely enters families’ conversations pertaining to wealth planning and well-being. Laura gives an overview of the current state of palliative care – how it is understood, how it is practiced, and what attitudes and resources currently exist for families. Unfortunately, dealing with death and end-of-life care is something all families have to deal with in one way or another, and as with anything else, it’s better to be prepared than not. Laura offers her advice for families who are dealing with an end-of-life situation, either within their own family or in their immediate community and recommends some practical tips on how to be aware of and potentially seek out palliative care resources and help. Finally, Laura provides some guidance for families who want to help others in their community or more broadly in the world gain understanding and access to palliative care, outlining different ways families can support and promote this cause of making palliative care broadly available around the world to all people who need it. Don’t miss this important, enlightening, and moving conversation with one of the world’s leading experts in and champions of end-of-life care.

Today, I have the pleasure of speaking with Ella Chase, co-founder of Wellth Works, an executive coaching and leadership company for wealth inheritors and future family leaders. Ella is herself a 7th-generation family member of a 100-year family, and has seen the burdens and blessings of complex, multi-generational family enterprises. She is a dynamic and innovative speaker, facilitator, and mentor, and a recognized authority on the psychology of leadership, negotiations, and organizational turnaround. Ella talks about the macro context within which she and her business, Wellth Works, currently operate. Multigenerational families are in a unique moment in history, and a lot is going to change as vast amounts of wealth transition in the coming couple of decades, and Ella shares the perspectives of a G7 wealth inheritor on how the next 10-20 years are likely to unfold and why it is important to focus on preparing the rising-gen of enterprise families. The needs, challenges, and opportunities facing next-gen members of multigenerational families are very unique and often not fully understood – maybe even misunderstood. Ella discusses the challenges rising-gen members are facing and the stereotypes, assumptions, and misconceptions they have to deal with and overcome to become fulfilled, thriving family members and leaders. In her work coaching rising-gen leaders, Ella uses a number of methods and frameworks she has developed. One such tool is the Decision-Making Matrix to get clients unstuck and to unlock paralysis. Ella delves into how families can apply this practical framework to their unique situations. She also emphasizes the importance of developing key skills and a support community of peers and experts and shares her practical tips and tools for rising-gen members who are either feeling stuck or who want to maximize their leadership potential and personal wellbeing. Enjoy this illuminating and instructive conversation with a uniquely positioned and qualified expert and practitioner in the space of helping families and their rising generations achieve success and wellbeing.

Happy New Year! Welcome to the brand new 2024 season of FOXCast CEO Series. Today, I have the pleasure and honor of speaking with Sara Hamilton, Founder and Board Chair of Family Office Exchange (FOX). Sara founded FOX as a peer network for family office executives in 1989, which evolved over the ensuing decades into a trusted knowledge partner to family enterprises, a platform for sharing family wealth best practices, and an industry advocate for the importance of private enterprise in a global economy. In this episode, Sara delves into the conceptual definitions and practical implications of being an enterprise family. The term “enterprise family” has been widely adopted by sophisticated families and some advisors in the UHNW family wealth space, but it’s not clear that everyone understands its true meaning or that there is one universally embraced definition within our industry. Sara puts forth a clear and compelling definition of what it means and what it takes to be an enterprise family and offers a list of characteristics and behaviors that set enterprise families apart. She then shares her views of the benefits of being an enterprise family, based on her experience of working with many of the leading multigenerational families in North America and globally over the past nearly 4 decades. Sara provides an outline of her proprietary framework consisting of the 30 Building Blocks for an Enduring Enterprise Family, an invaluable practical tool for families who are starting or accelerating their journey to being a multigenerational enterprise. Sara has developed this framework over the course of 20 years and is currently putting it in the form of a workbook families can use to organize and track their progress as an enterprise. Sara shares some practical tips for families on how to get started with the 30 Building Blocks if they want to develop or strengthen their family enterprise, providing useful suggestions for both aspiring enterprise families who are just getting started and for those who are more mature and advanced enterprise families already. Building and maintaining a sophisticated enterprise requires commitment, focus, and investment of time and resources from the family and its individual members. Sara offers her perspective and a synthesis of the feedback she has received from many families on why the time and effort required to keep an enterprise going from generation to generation is well worth it in the long run. You would not want to miss this deeply insightful and instructive conversation with one of the most influential founders of the family office industry and foremost thought leader and practitioner in the family wealth space, Sara Hamilton.

Today, I am excited to speak with Amber Slattery, a director at a single-family office based in Paris, France. Amber is also a next-gen education coach, working directly with clients in their teens and early-20s, and creating custom programming based on their individual interests and needs. In addition, she serves as a programming consultant to Bounce10, a financial parenting platform, founded by Joline Godfrey, focusing on next-gen education for children ages 4-10. Amber offers her thoughts on the misconceptions or gaps of understanding among UHNW families about preparing and engaging their children to be good owners and family enterprise members. In her work in the realm of rising-gen learning and engagement, Amber often sees clients, especially parents, come to her and other advisors looking for “next-gen education” and not actually knowing what they need or even mean by that. Amber specializes in working with 14-20-year-old clients – an age group that many UHNW principals are not very focused on or don’t know how to deal with. She shares her insights into the unique challenges and opportunities associated with engaging and educating teenage and college-age rising gens. Amber shares a practical framework she has developed working with 14-20-year-old rising-gen members she refers to as the “6 Key Findings” – a useful tool to inform and structure the work with younger family members in this age bracket. She also makes use of well-thought-out, thought-provoking questionnaires, both for the parents and for their children, to generate the right conversations, get on the same page about the process, and spur the right level of thinking, and ultimately, engagement. Amber offers a peek into her approach to orientation questionnaires and the “12 Key Questions” she asks to encourage engagement with teenage or emerging adult clients. Enjoy the numerous practical tools and suggestions Amber Slattery shares in this instructive conversation.