FOXcast

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.

This week, it is my pleasure to speak with Dr. Jesse Viner, CEO & Chief Medical Officer and Dr. Bryn Jessup, Director of Family Services & Systems at Yellowbrick, a leading resource and national referral center serving enterprise families and providing mental health services and psychiatric treatment of troubled emerging adults. Jesse and Bryn, and their firm Yellowbrick, have been a resource partner and now specialty advisor member of the FOX community, bringing their unique expertise and thought leadership to our members. Mental health as a topic has not traditionally been part of the professional family wealth management discourse, and in fact has often been shrouded in stigma, swept under the rug, and left to families to deal with on their own. As mental health professionals for nearly 4 decades, Jesse and Bryn have witnessed the transformation of the field firsthand, and they share their views on the relevance of mental health to enterprising families of wealth. Mental health issues are challenging for everyone, but UHNW families are presented with a unique set of challenges and pain points when it comes to the mental wellbeing of their family members. Jesse and Bryn talk about the unique mental health burdens and challenges faced by UHNW families and offer some practical considerations and best practices pertaining to how families can approach the mental health and wellbeing of their family members in a proactive and positive way that builds a safe and supportive family culture. Jesse and Bryn also offer their advice for families who are facing a mental health concern, challenge, or even a crisis, and recommend a number of practical tips, resources, and steps for families struggling with a mental health issue. You would not want to miss this unique and deeply relevant conversation on a highly consequential, yet often neglected, topic with two of the foremost mental health thought leaders and practitioners working with UHNW families.

This week, I have the pleasure of speaking with Meg Pagani, a Forbes 30under30 and Fortune 40under40 founder, serial TEDx speaker, and an executive trainer. Meg teaches about Power and Leadership at the Politecnico di Milano executive programs, and helps investors, family offices and founders understand the hidden dimensions of wealth management and what that has to do with power and purpose. Meg delves into her work and research into the concept of ‘power’ – how people perceive it and use it, and how power is connected to relationships, purpose, and impact. She talks about the existence of both positive and negative power and how these are manifested in the world and needs of UHNW families and wealth management. Meg discusses the strong connection between power and the role it plays in the realm of individual purpose and impact and shares her views on how power is linked to purpose and self-actualization, and how that connects with major issues we, and especially rising generation members, increasingly care about, such as climate change, environmental degradation, and geopolitical unrest. Meg suggests some practical tips and tools for family members, both parents and rising-gen members, who want to gain an understanding of power and how it impacts their family and their community. She discusses what families can do to explore their relationship with power and how can they apply that knowledge to strengthen their family, resolve conflicts, and discover their shared purpose. Finally, Meg provides her insights into how families can apply power to their impact aspirations and strategy, and how they can connect power and agency to their impact agenda, their philanthropies, their investments, and their family enterprise overall. Enjoy this insightful conversation with one of our industry’s young stars of rising-gen engagement and empowerment.

Guglielmo Notarbartolo di Villarosa, Head of Private Equity & Venture Capital at PFC, discusses the intergenerational transition within his family branch and the importance of drafting a family constitution. They explore topics such as reshaping the family enterprise, defining value creation, supporting the next generation, selecting advisors, and the significance of family capital in creating local impact.

Tom McCullough, co-founder, chairman and CEO of Northwood Family Office, discusses the role of integrated wealth advisors and shares practical tips on finding the right advisor for wealthy families. He introduces the 'Four Markers' framework and highlights the importance of collaboration in developing infrastructure for integrated wealth advising.