FOXcast

Today, I sit down with our very own, Mindy Kalinowski Earley, Chief Learning Officer at FOX. Mindy leads the FOX Learning Center and is our in-house expert on all matters pertaining to family learning and rising-gen education and engagement. As one of the leading industry authorities in this field, her work is focused on helping families to be forward-thinking, cohesive, and thriving. In this conversation, Mindy shares insights from her work with families and their rising-gen members over the past 15 years, delving into the main areas of interest, importance, and concern to younger generations within enterprise families. Rising-gen family members bring their unique perspectives into the family conversations and the enterprise strategy, and integrating these diverse worldviews and ideas is of ever-greater importance to forward-looking families. And since the topic of the rising-gen is inextricably connected to the topic of education, Mindy talks about how the most sophisticated enterprise families are approaching education as a priority and how they are building robust learning capabilities into their strategy and their enterprise system. Mindy also unveils some of the key learnings and themes that emerged from a recent research study FOX conducted examining the needs, aspirations, and challenges that are specific to rising-gen family members. She offers some valuable pointers as to the top opportunities for families to motivate, engage, and inspire their younger members. Finally, Mindy provides a practical overview of the resources and tools that are available to families – both within FOX and more broadly across the industry – to develop programs, initiatives, and strategies aimed at developing, preparing, and engaging rising-gen members to become capable wealth owners, family enterprise leaders, and happy and fulfilled human beings. Enjoy this insightful conversation with one of the most knowledgeable and best-connected experts in the field of family learning and rising-gen engagement.

This week, I am speaking with Wally Head, founder and principal of Personal Fiduciary Advisors, LLC, founding board member and treasurer of the UHNW Institute, and good friend and former President of FOX. The topic of our conversation is hot in our industry and of great consequence to multigenerational enterprise families – the emergence and importance of integrated wealth advisors. Wally offers an instructive overview of the definition and role of an integrated wealth advisor, as well as the value of this most advanced discipline of family wealth advice. He describes this emerging discipline in the context of the evolution of the wealth management field and the rise of “Wealth 3.0” as the new paradigm for serving multigenerational families of wealth – a topic I recently discussed with Dr. Jim Grubman. We explore why and how clients should think about and seek out integrated wealth advisors, what to expect from them, and how to distinguish the truly legitimate integrated wealth firms and practitioners from the inflated marketing claims in the market. Wally also outlines the challenges and opportunities wealth management firms and providers face as they look to evolve into true integrated wealth advisors and the capabilities they need to build or acquire as they seek to elevate their talent, their processes, and their business models to deliver on their clients’ ever-rising needs and expectations for integrated wealth advice and holistic wealth management. Enjoy this insightful conversation with one of the leading thinkers and practitioners in the family wealth space.

This week, I sit down with Scott Helfstein, Head of Thematic Solutions at Global X, to discuss where the economy and markets are headed and what investment themes are emerging as the most attractive long-term bets for families and family offices to pursue. Scott offers valuable insights on the interplay between growth and value opportunities for investors, particularly for patient long-term investors, such as families, their offices, and their enterprises. He highlights the sectors that hold the most potential and shares his views on how families can best position themselves and their portfolios for long-term success and impact. To bring the different investment themes to life, Scott describes the ecosystem of opportunities he sees across a targeted subset of attractive market sectors, which include frontier themes, such as AI, robotics, IoT, data storage, and cybersecurity, as well as exciting traditional sectors, such as infrastructure and health care. Global X is a leader and innovator in manufacturing and deploying thematic exchange traded funds (ETFs), and Scott offers his views on how family investors and family offices can best make use of ETFs as an efficient vehicle to pursue thematic investing, as well as on what to watch out for and examine when choosing ETFs for their thematic strategies. Enjoy this insightful and instructive conversation with one of the foremost thought leaders in the field of thematic investing. Global X ETFs was founded in 2008. Over the past 15 years, our mission has remained unchanged: Empowering investors with unexplored and intelligent solutions. Learn about our full product lineup, which includes over a 100 Thematic Growth Equity Funds, Commodity and Income ETFs with thoroughly researched perspectives and commentary on the trends shaping global markets, and more at globalxetfs.com.

Today, I have the pleasure of speaking with Jim Grubman, a prominent thought leader, researcher, and advisor to multigenerational families in our industry. Jim and his equally prominent co-authors, Dennis Jaffe and Kristin Keffeler, have just published their latest book, Wealth 3.0. Jim and I discuss the Wealth 3.0 concept and the new paradigm it introduces for our field of private wealth management and family wealth advising. We talk about how Wealth 3.0 thinking and practices fundamentally differ from the established practices of the past 3-4 decades. The change in mindset and behaviors this future paradigm entails will have a broad and far-reaching impact on the wealth management industry at large, and will outright transform the more niche, specialized, and fast-growing field of family wealth advisory services. Everything from how the industry organizes itself to how it conducts research to how advisors are trained and certified to the language and terminology they use in day-to-day conversations with their ultra-high-net-worth (UHNW) clients. The book is a quick and fascinating read, and will likely become an important manifesto, and required reading, for future generations of family wealth advisors. Clients can also benefit greatly from this concept, which can help them evolve their own thinking, their interactions within their family, and their expectations of their trusted family advisors. Enjoy this conversation, and look for the Wealth 3.0 book, which just came out this week on Amazon.

I am delighted today to speak with Bob Jordan, retired Emmy-Award-winning TV journalist and owner of Jordan & Jordan Communications, Inc. Bob has spent his distinguished career as a journalist reporting on the stories that shaped the news of the day for over 5 decades. But over the last 25 years, he has also taken on the worthy task of helping enterprising multigenerational families capture the stories of their ancestors and pass on their defining values and legacy to their descendants. For all of us in the private wealth and family office space, it is becoming increasingly apparent how important it is to be nurturing and building the human capital of the families we serve. Ensuring the people within the family, across all its generations, are engaged and flourishing is often more important – and more difficult – than securing and growing the family’s financial capital. As FOX founder, Sara Hamilton, recently wrote, “Families have come to realize over time that preserving the family in the midst of wealth is more difficult than preserving the wealth.” There are many ways to engage and energize the family’s human capital – family purpose and values, robust governance, formalized learning and education, and regular family meetings are just some of the established and reliable tools sophisticated families employ. Through his creative and profound experiences as a family videographer, Bob highlights the galvanizing and unifying power of one still relatively underused tool – family histories. Tune in to learn about the many ways and formats families can capture and pass on the stories of their origins and of their ancestors’ formative journeys – from books to videography to heirlooms and artifacts to DNA analysis. Bob shares invaluable insights on how to get started recording family stories and how to select the service providers who can help guide the family through these complex, emotional, and sometimes even difficult discovery and storytelling projects. He offers priceless hard-learned lessons and proven recipes for overcoming the many challenges families face as they embark on the path of recording and passing the stories that comprise their family heritage. Most importantly, Bob illustrates with multiple examples from his long career as a family videographer, that the ultimate reward families enjoy as they successfully capture and convey their family histories is the shared purpose and meaning these stories instill among their family members across generations.

Today, I am excited to launch our new podcast series on “FOXCast” – in this show, we will offer you expert analysis and insightful conversations with the key players, foremost thinkers, and leading practitioners in the family capital, family enterprise and family office space. My first guest needs no introduction. I have the utmost honor to kick off this podcast series by speaking with industry legend and renowned thought leader, Jay Hughes. I am sure you have heard frequent references to “the five forms of family capital” - a term Jay coined many years ago to describe the full range of assets and capabilities families of wealth possess. In this conversation, Jay offers the most comprehensive and intuitive description I have ever heard of the five capitals, and the important hierarchy and interplay among them. With just a wave of his hand, he leaves us with a memorable visual framework to understand and remember how to position financial capital so that ultimately it nurtures and serves the purpose of the family’s most important asset - its human capital. In a similarly surprising, but obvious in retrospect, revelation, Jay examines the true meaning of the word “wealth” - a word all of us in our industry probably use hundreds of times each day. Yet, we rarely contemplate its origins and the forgotten meaning buried in its etymology. A meaning that, if rediscovered and embraced by both private wealth advisors and the families they serve, would help transform the wealth management industry and the outcomes it delivers for its exclusive clientele. Finally, Jay shares a sneak peek into his latest research and upcoming book, where he asks the surprising and provocative question: “Will the family live in the plan?” Can you guess the answer his preliminary research is uncovering? Can you fathom why that is the emerging answer and what to do about it? Jay’s meditation on how to bring purpose, humanity, and ultimately success to the highly technical advisory disciplines that surround the average enterprise family is both a wake-up call and a marvelous inspiration for the future generations of wealth owners and their trusted family wealth advisors.    

FOX Learning and Leadership Consultant Jeff Strese sits with Family Wealth Consultant Jim Grubman to discuss Jim's upcoming session at the 2022 FOX Family Forum and the new wealth management approach coined by Jim, Wealth 3.0.  To learn more about the 2022 FOX Family Forum and to register, visit: https://www.familyoffice.com/learning-programs/forums/2022-fox-family-forum

In this episode, Learning Center Program Manager Allison Lawshe and Chief Learning Officer Mindy Kalinowski discuss Mindy’s upcoming whitepaper, The Time is NOW for your Rising Gen. In the article, Mindy cautions families on waiting too long to involve their future family leaders. Outlaying personal quotes from members of the rising generation and relaying best practice first steps, she argues that when starting family learning and leadership skills…there is no time like the present.   After listening, visit lp.familyoffice.com/rglp to learn more about our Rising Generation Leadership Program, a four-part learning series that uses a multi-disciplinary approach to help Rising Generation family members become prepared, informed, credible, and contributing leaders to the family enterprise.

FOX Learning Center Program Manager Allison Lawshe sits with FOX Learning and Leadership Consultant Jeff Strese and Managing Director David Toth to discuss the new Family Advisor Training Program. The program features a paced learning approach with a cohort of peer advisors and family office professionals that begins with two virtual prep sessions, a two-day in-person intensive learning program, and a virtual application and accountability session. Please visit https://www.familyoffice.com/learning-programs/workshops/fox-family-advisor-training-program to get more information on the program and to register.

Jonathan Kosares, Chief Operating Officer, USA Gold, sits down with Glen W. Johnson, President of Family Office Exchange, to discuss how current trends in the American economy, including inflation, debt, and Federal Reserve policies are affecting the gold market, and stoking investor demand for gold.  Also included is a discussion on gold’s relationship to crypto.