FOXcast

Today, I have the pleasure of speaking with Stephen Goldbart and Joan DiFuria, co-founders of Money, Meaning, & Choices Institute (MMCI), a group of professional facilitators and advisors who work with wealth holders and their professional advisors to address the psychological issues and challenges of wealth. Joan is a globally recognized speaker and consultant for families of wealth, family businesses, family offices, and enterprises, and a licensed psychotherapist who has been in private practice for over 30 years. Stephen is a licensed clinical psychologist, professor, author, public speaker, and organizational consultant who has consulted with individuals, families, family offices, and organizations to help them develop the fulfilling and sustainable balance of personal, professional, and philanthropic goals. Both Joan and Stephen have dedicated their lives' work to helping families be successful by removing the obstacles that often stand in their way to long-term success. They uncover some of the key success factors – the "magic ingredients" – they discovered through their work that position families, and their advisors, to achieve their long-term strategic goals and to flourish across generations. Joan and Stephen uncovered and formulated a specific set of competencies that family members need to develop throughout their life journey – what they call the "10x10 Learning Roadmap" in their recently published book. They elaborate on the design, structure, and applications of this innovative framework and explain how it can help families and their individual members. Joan and Stephen then offer some practical tips for how families can apply the 10x10 Learning Roadmap, and how both family leaders and individual family members can make use of it in real life. Finally, they share how the 10x10 framework can also be successfully utilized by the trusted advisors who support multigenerational families and how they can lean on this comprehensive and practical tool to best serve their family clients. You would not want to miss this highly insightful conversation with two of the most respected practitioners in the family wealth and well-being field.

This week, I am delighted to welcome Scott Saslow, Founder and CEO of Palo Alto, CA-based ONE WORLD Investments Inc., which provides investment capital and advisory services to help organizations scale social impact. Over his career, Scott has been a founder or founding team member of seven start-up businesses. Prior to ONE WORLD, Scott was the Founder & CEO of The Institute of Executive Development, supporting executives in Global 2000 organizations including American Express, Blackrock, Intel, Time Warner, and the US Navy, and earlier in his career, he worked at Siebel Systems and Microsoft Corporation in leadership roles. Scott has authored over twenty-five articles for publications such as Forbes and Directorship and has been interviewed by and quoted in Harvard Business Review, Bloomberg and BusinessWeek. Scott expounds on the concept of "sustainability" as it pertains to a family office, and he provides his definition of a sustainable family office and explains why sustainability is important in this context. Having emphasized how important this objective is for the family, Scott then talks about how families and family offices pursue sustainability and how they prepare for it and how they achieve it. He outlines the many dimensions and ways to make a family office sustainable. Scott is just about to release his new book Building a Sustainable Family Office, which is an excellent, and to some extent, autobiographical, compendium of everything families need to know or consider as they create or take over a family office. The book is organized around and culminates in the definition of what Scott refers to as "the five key elements of success." Scott gives us a sneak peek into what the five elements are and how each of them contributes to the long-term success of the family and its family office. Sustainability is also often referred to as an investment philosophy and a values system. Scott shares his views about how families can connect their aspiration for sustainable investing with their effort to build and operate a sustainable family office. Don't miss this insights-packed conversation with a rising-gen owner of a family enterprise, a successful entrepreneur and wealth creator, and a proponent of family sustainability and positive impact.

Today, it is my pleasure and honor to speak with Prof. Maarten de Groot, Endowed Chair of Resilient Family Businesses & Enterprise Families at VU Amsterdam School of Business and Economics. Prior to completing his PhD at VU Amsterdam in 2021, Maarten had a long and distinguished career in wealth management. He co-founded and ran one of Europe's largest and most innovative multi-family offices, VermogensGroep, which was acquired by UBS in 2008, and later he was Executive Chairman of a single-family office. Maarten was knighted by the King of the Netherlands for his contributions to society, and is the recipient of multiple prestigious awards, including the 2022 Sustainable Investments Award, the 2023 Business Impact Award, and the 2023 VU Crowds Award. He is the founder and director of the VU Center for Enterprise Family Research and is the program director of the Responsible Ownership for Enterprise Families (ROEF) executive education program at VU Amsterdam, which was created and run in partnership with FOX. Maarten has studied and worked with multigenerational families for decades and has identified many of the key topics and priorities that successful families focus on. He shares some of the most important factors and themes that define and propel families' journeys through time and across generations. Possibly the most universal topic that is relevant to all families across the globe and throughout time is preparing the next generation for the future stages of the family journey. Maarten talks about how he sees the importance and centrality of engaging and preparing the rising gen to play a meaningful role in their family enterprise. One important practical suggestion Maarten has for families, and especially for the younger members of the rising gen, is to understand and develop their relationship with wealth. He highlights some of the key challenges rising gen members face and what they can do to overcome them in order to see their role as wealth owners in a positive and healthy way. Maarten spearheaded the development of the ROEF Academy (Responsible Ownership for Enterprise Families) program – an innovative, world-class educational program, designed jointly by VU Amsterdam and FOX. We just successfully concluded our first year and graduated the first cohort of young next-gen family members. Maarten offers an overview of the ROEF program, its mission and design, and how it helps rising gen owners identify and prepare for their role in the family enterprise. Do not miss this deeply insightful conversation with one of the most distinguished thought leaders in the multigenerational family wealth space. Maarten is a celebrated academic researcher and educator, a successful entrepreneur and family office executive, and a globally recognized practitioner and advisor to many enterprise families across the globe.

Today, I am pleased to welcome Michael Whelchel, Founder and CEO of Big Path Capital, a boutique investment bank working with positive impact companies and funds and pursuing a mission to challenge the status quo and raise the expectations of capitalism. Prior to founding Big Path, Micheal had 15-year career in private equity holding leadership positions at several firms, including Morris Capital Management and Stony Point Group. We start by discussing the big idea behind Michael's work – what he calls "leveraging capitalism". Michael explains what that means, elaborating on the challenges and the opportunities he sees with how capitalism operates today and how it could or should operate. Michael founded Big Path Capital to advance this vision for the future of capitalism. He talks about how his firm differs from other investment intermediaries, how he sees his purpose and mission in the marketplace, and what he is doing to advance this mission and achieve his vision for capitalism. For families, family offices, and other private capital investors in the marketplace who are interested in embracing impact investing as a superior way of deploying capital, Michael offers a number of practical tips to get them started on the right path. He also describes how families can get engaged in this mission by attending the annual Impact Capitalism Summit he and his firm host in Nantucket each year. Michael shares an overview of this unique event and provides suggestions for how family members and family offices who are active investors can get involved, contribute to, and benefit from this gathering. Enjoy this informative conversation with one of the most active and innovative champions of impact capitalism in the private capital space.

Join Amjed Saffarini, co-founder and CEO of Trove, as he shares insights from his diverse career, moving from medicine to innovative family office solutions. He challenges the adage 'if you've seen one family office, you've seen one family office,' arguing for more commonality than often recognized. Amjed discusses the delicate balance between customization and standardization in family offices, providing practical strategies for families navigating complexity. He emphasizes the value of adaptability and community learning in optimizing family capital for long-term impact.

Today, I am pleased to welcome Matt Tobin, President and Chief Operating Officer for South Dakota Trust Company (SDTC) and President of SDTC Services. SDTC Services provides consulting and corporate services to the non-depository trust company industry, and as President, Matt is primarily responsible for managing the Company's Private and Public Trust Company client relationships. He serves as a board director and committee member for several private and public trust companies, is member of the Board of Managers for SDTC, and Board of Directors member for the South Dakota Trust Association. Matt is the author of many influential publications on Private Trust Companies and has delivered numerous speeches and presentations on the topic, including at the Purposeful Planning Symposium, the Heckerling Institute on Estate Planning, Georgetown Law Center, and the Jackson Hole Financial Professionals' Symposium, to mention just a few. He is also a frequent speaker at FOX forums, webcasts, and workshops, and is guest faculty at the highly popular FOX Private Trust Company Workshop. The focus of today's conversation is on Private Trust Companies (PTCs) as a legal construct to organize and administer multigenerational family assets and professionalize the governance of complex enterprise families. Matt covers basics, including what is a PTC; why were PTCs created; and how they function? He then describes how enterprise families are using PTCs today and explains why they are becoming more and more popular. He goes over the use cases and challenges PTCs can help address for multigenerational families. For families who are exploring the topic and thinking about utilizing a PTC, Matt offers some valuable practical tips and suggestions that can help them avoid common pitfalls and make the process of researching or establishing a PTC a smooth one. He also provides many pointers and tips for families who already have a PTC to help them ensure they are making the most of this investment and the structures and tools it provides. Do not miss this rich and informative conversation with one of the foremost experts on Private Trust Companies in our industry.

I am delighted to welcome Buddy Thomas, Founder and President of Superior Planning | Family Office, a Southern California firm serving HNW and UHNW families since 1982. Buddy has created more than 50 individual virtual family offices, providing family fiduciaries, family members, and their most trusted advisors with what they need to collaborate and make decisions together. He is the author of four books, over fifty published articles, and the producer of more than 200 videos including, the "Fifty-Five Second Family Fiduciary" and "Secrets of a Family Fiduciary" series. In his work with enterprising families, Buddy team developed a concept he calls "the three essential elements". He describes this concept and how he puts it to work when he advises wealthy families. As with any creative conceptual framework, the key question and the real test is how it gets applied in real-life situations. Buddy paints a detailed picture of how he and his team do wealth planning with families that encompasses all three essential elements and talks about the planning process they have created that achieves the appropriate balance between left- and right-brain topics and priorities. Buddy and his firm are known for at least one practical tool they apply successfully with families – a tool that they even named their firm after, the Superplan. Buddy defines what the Superplan is and outlines how it works and how families can benefit from it. Taking his methodology to the next level, Buddy and his firm have now developed a Family Wealth Game as a modern tool to help families engage in the planning process together and are even building this game into a software application. He shares the vision and workings of this game, describes what it adds to the wealth advisory process, and illustrates the experience it delivers to enterprising families. Please enjoy this insightful conversation with a thoughtful and creative veteran of the family wealth advisory profession and a member of a multigenerational enterprising family.

In this engaging discussion, Jamie McLaughlin, Founder and CEO of J. H. McLaughlin & Co., shares insights from his 30+ year career in wealth management and family offices. He reveals how the industry has evolved, driven by regulatory changes and shifting client demands. Jamie explains the importance of intimacy and trust in a competitive landscape and outlines the diverse types of firms serving ultra-high-net-worth clients. He emphasizes the duty of wealthy families to use their capital for social good, advocating for thoughtful advisor selection and business design.

Today, I am delighted to welcome Joe Reilly, CEO and Founder of Circulus Group. Joe is the host of two popular and influential podcasts in the family office and family wealth space: the Private Capital Podcast and the Inheritance Podcast. He is a longtime strategy consultant and family office expert, specializing in advising asset and wealth managers on their allocations, technology, and operations. Joe was the co-founder and founding president of the Family Office Association, and he is currently a director of The Inheritance Project, a non-profit that shares stories of inheritors. As one of the leaders of The Inheritance Project, which is dedicated to telling the stories of wealth inheritors and exploring the emotional and social impact of wealth, Joe talks about the purpose and motivations behind this undertaking. Based on conversations with inheritors and his work with families of wealth, he provides a glimpse into the most dominant themes he encounters – the top issues, challenges, or opportunities that emerge from speaking with these wealth owners. Joe offers a set of practical suggestions and advice for wealth owners and family members extracted from the different family stories he has encountered over the years, listing some useful tools and frameworks he has seen being successfully utilized by family leaders and family members. He also delves into the role of the advisors serving the family and shares some of the success stories and highly effective methods, tools, and tactics best-in-class family wealth advisors apply in their work with multigenerational families and wealth inheritors. Please enjoy this highly informative conversation with one of the long-time thought leaders and practitioners in the private capital and family wealth space.

Today, it is my pleasure to speak with Ryan Harding and Jennifer Allen. Ryan is the President of Garden Trust Company and the Managing Director of the IFO Group, the family office of the Ilitch family of Detroit, MI, founders of Little Caesar's Pizza, one of the world's largest pizza chains. Jennifer is the Director of Insurance & Risk Solutions for the IFO and is responsible for Tenda, a captive insurance company established by the Ilitch Family Office. The insurance industry is experiencing significant disruptions and undergoing a fundamental transformation, and Ryan and Jennifer share their observations on the current insurance landscape and how the industry and the solutions it provides have evolved in recent years. Most family enterprises are complex systems of people and entities that have unique, and often esoteric, risk management and insurance needs. Ryan and Jennifer shed light on the unique needs of enterprise families and their family offices and offer their views on how well the insurance industry is currently able to cater to these needs. For the unique needs of their family, the IFO Group concluded that establishing a captive insurance company is the right solution that best serves the family and its enterprise and provides the best protection and benefits to the family members and other constituents within the enterprise. As a result, they created Tenda, their insurance captive, that provides a range of insurance products, including best-in-class, accessible, and affordable health insurance to family members and family office employees. Ryan and Jennifer provide a quick "Insurance Captives 101," covering some of the basics, such as what are captives, how do they work, and why are they an attractive option for family enterprises. They also describe how other enterprise families or family offices can take advantage of the unique solutions provided by Tenda or pursue other similar offerings in the marketplace. Do not miss this highly relevant and in-depth conversation with two of the most sophisticated risk management thought leaders and practitioners in the family enterprise and family office space.