FOXcast

This week, I welcome to FOXCast Michelle Jezycki, President of Trifecta Consulting, a US-based human resources management company. Michelle is the former Director of Human Resources for the United States Senate, and a Visiting Associate Professor at the American University in Bulgaria teaching Leadership in their EMBA program. Michelle shares insights from her work with families and family offices, which focuses on their human capital and often centers around change. She describes the challenges many people face with change, especially when different people have differing expectations and visions. She offers her views on how best to handle communications and expectations during a change-management process, such as family succession or family vision and values or rising-gen engagement and education. She also covers another hallmark of the human-capital advisory work she does, which is that it often wades into topics and relationships that are difficult and emotionally charged. She emphasizes the importance of emotional intelligence during these family and family office change-management projects and offers suggestions on how best to navigate the complexities that arise. Michelle talks about one practical implement she frequently deploys in her work with families – a family retreat or facilitated family meeting. She shares her thinking on how family retreats can be used to facilitate change and effective communications among family members and puts forth practical tips for conducting successful family meetings and retreats. Finally, Michelle delves into the importance of the individual development of family members and even key staff of the family office. She outlines her philosophy on IDPs (individual development plans) and how to apply them with family members, especially younger members of the rising gen, and provides tips on how families can employ this important human-capital tool effectively. Enjoy this instructive and practical conversation with a uniquely experienced professional in the field of human capital management and key talent development.

I am pleased to welcome John Coyle, CEO and Founder of Speaking Design Thinking, to FOXCast. John is a sought-after keynote speaker, best-selling author, and former Olympic medalist in speedskating. Known as #TheTimeGuy, he is a thought leader in the field of chronoception – the study of how humans process time. John talks about the brain science of chronoception, unpacking the intricacies of how we perceive and interact with time. He argues that “there is no such thing as chronological time”, shattering some commonly held beliefs about time as a concept and introducing a lot more complexity and nuance to our relationship with time. Jonh has formulated the Three Laws of Experiential Time, and he discusses how they work and what their implications are for those of us seeking to maximize our return on this most precious and finite asset. He shares a number of practical applications of his Three Laws and offers suggestions to leaders of families and enterprises for how they can better manage their time capital and achieve better return on time invested by understanding and applying these fundamental laws. John also introduces the concept of the Time Investment Portfolio that helps families and family office professionals understand and manage the interplay between quantity and quality of time spent and thus maximize what he refers to as the “memory value of time”. Don’t miss this fascinating, mind-bending, and yet, highly practical conversation with #TheTimeGuy – one of the world’s foremost thought leaders on time capital.

This week, I’m speaking with Vincent Kavanagh, Executive Vice President and Head of Sales at Four Corners Aviation. Vincent has nearly 20 years of experience serving the aviation needs of UHNW clients in Europe and the US. Vincent and his firm, Four Corners Aviation, are a Specialist Advisor member at FOX and an active and generous contributor to the FOX community. Vincent offers an overview of the macro trends and developments that have been shaping the private aviation space in the past couple of decades. He describes how products and offerings have evolved, and explains how technology and business model innovations, as well as changing client needs and behaviors, have advanced the private aviation industry. Vincent offers practical tips for clients who fly private, starting with those who are experienced with private aviation, including families or enterprise leaders who already own and operate aircraft or are active users of fractional and other shared solutions. He also provides many invaluable suggestions for those who are just starting out in this complex and technical space – especially families, family offices, and business owners who are considering or evaluating private aviation solutions. Enjoy this conversation with one of the leading private aviation experts in the FOX community and the very helpful insights he shares relating to this niche and specialized UHNW service sector.

This week, I have the pleasure of speaking with Kristin Keffeler, Chief Learning Officer at the Johnson Financial Group. Kristin is a celebrated author of such influential books in our industry as the recently published Wealth 3.0: The Future of Family Wealth Advising, and The Myth of the Silver Spoon: Navigating Family Wealth & Creating an Impactful Life. She is also the Dean of Family Positive Psychology at the Purposeful Planning Institute. Kristin is passionate about the challenges and opportunities facing the rising-gen members of enterprising families, a subject she covers in depth in her influential book, The Myth of the Silver Spoon. She delves into the topic here, especially focusing on how the strengths-based approach can unlock the rising gen’s potential for success, happiness, and impact. She also describes the challenges that are potentially holding back rising-gen members and their parents – the things she calls “clutter” in her book – and offers suggestions on how to overcome them. Kristin also talks about the core theses of her other recently released book, Wealth 3.0, which she co-authored with Jim Grubman and Dennis Jaffee. This visionary book has been widely seen as primarily focused on or aimed at the family wealth advisor profession and its impending evolution, however, Kristin talks here about the clients, the families who are served by the advisor community, and the role they too play in the Wealth 3.0 evolution. She describes how family member education, awareness, and expectations of what Wealth 3.0 is and how it should serve them are critical drivers of the coming change. Kristin also offers some practical tips and tools for family members, including parents and the younger generations. She indicates what parents can do to enable a positive strengths-based engagement and to catalyze the evolution of their family and advisor interactions and processes toward the Wealth 3.0 model. She also outlines the opportunities for the younger generation and the role they can play to bring about and drive the positive, strengths-driven Wealth 3.0 approach of engaging with their family, the family enterprise, and the advisor ecosystem that surrounds them. Don’t miss this engaging conversation with one of our industry’s foremost thinkers and practitioners specializing in the rising gen and their success and well-being.

This week, I am thrilled to be speaking with Cassindy Chao and Shannon Lundgren, co-founders of Boutique Matchmaking, a high-end personal advisory practice that provides curated matchmaking, date coaching, and strategic consulting for multigenerational families of wealth. The fact that we are talking about high-end professional matchmaking, date coaching, and curated singles education for UHNW clients, shows just how far our field is progressing toward embracing the full spectrum of qualitative, human-capital needs, and wellbeing of our UHNW clients. Cassindy and Shannon provide an overview of how the professional matchmaking field has evolved over the past 10-20 years, and how this highly consequential service is gradually maturing from being shrouded in stigma and mystery to being professionalized, supported by research and best practices, and provided by professionally trained and sophisticated advisors and consultants. Many of the qualitative wellbeing topics in our field are still considered somewhat sensitive, controversial, or even taboo for families and advisors to engage in openly and professionally, and romantic coaching and matchmaking services are right up there on the list of difficult or hush-hush topics. Cassindy and Shannon shed some light on the challenges and risk these stigmas create for single UHNW clients, their families, and their family enterprises. The co-founders of Boutique Matchmaking dip into their rich experience and share some of the most common client situations they face. They also offer many practical tips and suggestions for UHNW clients who are either starting for the first time to look for a life partner or are thinking of reentering the dating scene later in their life. Nowadays, it is increasingly likely for wealth advisors, family office executives, and other trusted professionals who surround and serve the family to be exposed to the personal and even romantic aspects of their clients’ lives. We have had instances within the FOX community where family office professionals have had to deal with challenging situations involving romantic fraud, dating-app etiquette, and other “non-traditional” family wellbeing topics. Cassindy and Shannon offer some advice for professional advisors and family office employees who find themselves involved in and have to navigate well these sensitive areas and moments in their principals’ lives. Please enjoy this unique and eye-opening conversation with two of the trailblazers of professional matchmaking, date coaching, and romantic consulting. Cassindy and Shannon, and their firm Boutique Matchmaking, have just recently joined the FOX community as official marketing partners, and we are proud to offer their expertise and thought leadership to our members.

Paul Westall and Tayyab Mohamed, co-founders of Agreus group, discuss the unique needs of family offices in talent recruitment. They highlight the increased professionalization of family office operations and governance as a significant trend. They offer practical tips for family offices to attract and retain topnotch professionals. The chapter also explores the challenges of compensation and incentives, as well as the importance of family capital and enterprises in the economy.

Today, I am particularly honored to welcome Prof. Michael Feiner, President at Michael C. Feiner Consulting. From 2000 to 2010, Michael was Professor of Management and Ethics Fellow at Columbia Graduate School of Business, and I was lucky enough, as an MBA student at Columbia Business School in 2003, to take his High-Performance Leadership class, which in many ways has shaped me as a business leader. Prior to teaching and consulting, Michael was a senior executive at Pepsi for 20 years and was Senior VP and Worldwide Chief People Officer for the consumer-packaged goods giant. He now advises a wide variety of organizations, including private equity firms, Fortune 500 companies, and fast-growing start-ups. Michael talks about how the field of high-performance leadership has evolved over the past 20+ years and how learning institutions and business organizations are teaching the required skillsets and developing high-performance leaders. We unpack the reality of high-performance leadership and examine whether the discipline is now fully embraced and practiced by HR departments and governance board or are leaders still generally left to “learn on the job”. Michael draws on his nearly 5 decades of experience as a human capital leader, executive coach, and leadership guru to share some practical tips for leaders who want to master the art of high-performance leadership and apply it in their day-to-day work with their teams. He also sheds light on what team members can and should be doing to best engage their leaders and to encourage and incite high-performance leadership from their superiors. Please enjoy this insightful and practical conversation with one of the most celebrated people leaders and leadership thinkers, and sample some of the most valuable and enduring leadership lessons that I personally have learned from Prof. Michael Feiner from my days at Columbia Business School and have tested and applied throughout my own (ongoing) leadership journey.

This week, I am delighted to welcome Dr. Dennis Jaffe, Senior Research Fellow at BanyanGlobal Family Business Advisors, trusted advisor to numerous enterprise families, and celebrated author of such iconic books in our industry as the recently published Wealth 3.0: The Future of Family Wealth Advising and Borrowed from Your Grandchildren: The Evolution of 100-Year Family Enterprises. Dennis shares some of the key findings of his immense catalog of research and thought leadership in the field of family well-being and wealth management, particularly drawing on his ongoing study of the Resilience of 100-Year Family Enterprises. He emphasizes the criticality of positive thinking, motivation, and engagement and the importance of not succumbing to popular negative myths about enterprising families of wealth. Drawing on his decades of advising successful multigenerational families, Dennis highlights some of the practical tools families can put to work to emulate the success of the enduring, “generative” families he has studied. He has created some of the most widely used tools in the industry, such as The Values Edge and Family Enterprise Assessment Tool (FEAT) and provides tips on when and how families can peruse them. Dennis also offers some reflections and recommendations for family wealth advisors for how best to serve enterprise families and help them engage their family members across generations in a positive, generative, and inspiring way. Don’t miss this enlightening conversation with one of the pioneers and best recognized thought leaders of the family wealth advisory profession.

Today, I have the pleasure of speaking with Ellen Perry, founder and Managing Partner of Wealthbridge Partners. In 1989, Ellen co-founded GenSpring Family Offices, which became one of the leading fee-only multifamily office firms and was acquired by SunTust Bank in 2001. The GenSpring brand continues to this day as part of Truist Bank. She is the author of “A Wealth of Possibilities – Navigating Family, Money and Legacy” – a vital resource for families who seek to better understand the qualitative issues associated with their human capital. Ellen talks about her discovery and immersion into family systems theory and shares the key learnings she derived from this body of knowledge and their applications in her work with families. Ellen reflects on the most important priority for any family, and any family system – ensuring the well-being of their children and the success and happiness of the future generation. Having worked with many families to help them prepare their rising generation and pass on the family ethos and values, Ellen shares her observations on how well families are doing today at this all-important task and how successful parents and family leaders are in nurturing the young members of the family to be happy and fulfilled and how they are engaging them to become the future leaders of the family. Ellen offers her tips on the practical frameworks she uses with families to engage and empower their young family members, such as the “Four Meaningful Questions” and the “Life Values Inventory” and talks about how she uses these tools to guide families to establish deeper connections, emotional intimacy, and enhanced well-being for their members. Finally, Ellen contemplates the role of the family’s advisors in this process – both the ones working inside the family enterprise or single-family office and the trusted external advisors working for outside firms. She shares her views on what the family wealth advisory industry should be doing to advance the cause of stronger connections within the family and to help families flourish across generations. We hope you enjoy this conversation with one of the most influential and thoughtful founders and shapers of the family wealth advisory field.

I am absolutely delighted to speak today with Joline Godfrey, highly respected family advisor, educator, and author of many books, including the all-time classic “Raising Financially Fit Kids”. In 1992, Joline founded An Income of Her Own, the first non-profit focused exclusively on financial education for girls and women, and subsequently started Independent Means Inc. to provide financial education to girls and boys, which was acquired in 2015. She is now the Founder of Bounce10, a brand-new startup financial parenting platform offering highly bespoke financial education to families. Joline has been a pioneer and industry trailblazer in the field of family education, especially in helping families prepare and equip their rising generations with the life skills and financial fluency required for them to be successful. In this episode, she shares her views on the current state of how ready and prepared families feel to cope with the future and the constant change they face and offers some valuable and practical learning and engagement tools. Joline shares her unique insights from working with the youngest family members, those in their 20s and younger, and talks about the unique challenges Gen Z family members face today and how are they different from what young people in prior generations have had to contend with throughout history. Given the unprecedented disruptions young people face today, Joline offers some practical and important steps families can, and must, take to help ready their future generations and highlights some of the best tools, frameworks, or solutions families can utilize to educate and inspire their young members. Finally, since nowadays families rely on an ever-growing constellation of family wealth advisors to accomplish their goals, Joline provides some suggestions and ideas for family advisors, many of whom come from deeply technical and quantitative disciplines. She shares her ideas on how advisors can be more supportive and relevant to their clients by helping the families they serve better prepare, educate, and engage their younger family members for the uncertainties of the future. Enjoy this fascinating conversation with our industry’s best known and highly regarded pioneer of family learning and rising-gen education.