Afleveringen
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Today, I am excited to speak with René Sonneveld, a Leadership and Family Business Coach and Honorary Consul General of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Uruguay. René a has rich history as Managing Director, CEO, and Chairman at Fortune 500 companies and family-run businesses across four continents, and he now leverages this vast experience to coach leaders and corporate teams. Besides leadership and family enterprise coaching, René is deeply committed to sustainability. He aims to create a green hydrogen supply chain from South America to Europe.
Throughout his career, René has served many multigenerational families and has found that often, as he puts it, there’s “an elephant in the room” that gets in the way of families collaborating effectively and achieving their goals. He talks about what “the elephant in the room” is and how to best approach it and, eventually, dispense with it.
René eventually discovered coaching and dedicated his life to this noble calling. He shares his beliefs on why coaching is the best tool to empower families to succeed and how it helps eliminate “the elephant in the room” that holds them back.
One technique René deploys in his coaching work is what he calls “the icebreaker”. He describes how it works and what the benefits families and family enterprises can reap from this practical tool.
Families and family enterprises are complex organisms, commonly involving a great number of players who are entangled in complicated and often emotionally charged relationships. These can include family leaders, blood family, children, in-laws, advisors, to mention just a few key constituents. René offers his advice on when to bring in whom in the coaching process with the family in order to achieve the best results.
Enjoy this insightful conversation with a world-renowned leadership coach and family advisor.
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Today, I have the pleasure of speaking with Özge Doğan, Founder of Karman Beyond, Türkiye’s first independent multi-family office. Karman Beyond is a boutique advisory service for leading families in Turkey (and beyond) and Özge manages all the relationships with the firm’s client families. Özge is a next-gen member of a prominent Turkish family enterprise, and she founded her multi-family office firm in response to her own family’s wealth management needs – and the lack of an available solutions in Türkiye.
We start with a quick overview of family enterprises and family wealth in Türkiye and Özge describes the most common profiles of enterprise families in the country, as well as the most pressing needs and challenges faced by enterprising families, and how are they dealing with these challenges.
Özge outlines the current context of the family wealth and wealth management industry in Türkiye, and she talks about the ecosystem of family wealth advisory firms, service providers, and peer communities that serve multigenerational Turkish families.
One practical advice Özge offers to Turkish families – which is probably relevant across other cultures as well – is to understand and embrace the next-generation mindset, including the generational differences in values, preference, investing styles, etc. Can you talk about that and how families can successfully apply this mindset.
Another practical reality for families in Türkiye, and all over the world, is their increasing interest and exposure to global assets and jurisdictions, including investing, operating, and relocating across multiple geographies globally. Özge shares her views on the client needs and behaviors she is observing, and offers her recommendations for the knowledge, services, and resources families should seek to be successful in their global strategies.
Please enjoy this enlightening conversation with a young rising-gen owner and founder of the first multi-family office in Türkiye.
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Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
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Today, I am delighted to welcome Scott Peppet, President of Chai Trust Company, the private company that administers trusts established for the benefit of members of Sam Zell’s family and that serves as the Zell family office. Scott was a Professor of Law at the University of Colorado from 2000-2018, where he focused on bargaining and dispute resolution, transactional law, and the complexities of multigenerational family enterprises. He is also an ordained priest and transmitted Soto Zen teacher in the related lineages of Kobun Chino Otakawa and Keibun Otakawa. He practices at the Hakubai Zen Center in Boulder, CO. Scott is a good friend of FOX, and he and the Chai Trust Company are long-time valued members of FOX and are very generous and insightful contributors to the FOX community.
Throughout his career, Scott has seen and participated in his fair share of enterprise family journeys and has had the opportunity to observe and synthesize what it takes for families and their family offices to be successful. He shares his views and accumulated wisdom on the subject of what it takes for a family to be successful in the long run.
We at FOX think and talk a lot about the concept of time capital – how we all deploy our most precious and finite asset. Scott points out that a simple yet powerful way to assess and guide the strategic role and effectiveness of a family office is to look at how it allocates and spends its resources – especially, how the family office leaders and employees spend their time. He describes the importance of – and potential cognitive dissonance associated with – how family office time capital is managed and expended.
One practical suggestion Scott offers to families and their family offices is to invest in cultivating, educating, and engaging the whole ecosystem of human and intellectual capital that serves the family – not just the family members, but also the family office employees, and even all the external advisors who are integral to the family enterprise.
To up-level and educate an entire system is such a tremendous undertaking and families are not the only ones who can and should lead and invest in it. All the other participants in the ecosystem also have a part to play. Scott provides his views on what family office executives and employees, as well as external advisors, should do to ensure the entire enterprise family ecosystem is flourishing.
This is a must-hear conversation with one of the most prominent and celebrated thought leaders, practitioners, and enterprise family leaders in the family wealth and family office field.
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Today, I’m excited to speak with Brian Argrett, Chair of the Board Directors and President and CEO of Broadway Financial Corporation and its banking subsidiary City First Bank, the largest Black-led minority depository institution (MDI) in the nation.
Impact investing is an increasingly important topic for enterprise families and family offices. Our conversation today focuses on a truly unique and attractive avenue for positive impact available to enterprise families and family offices, which is made possible thanks to the Advancing Communities Together Deposit Program, or ACT – an innovative program that provides an easy and fully insured way for family offices to invest their excess cash directly in the financial institutions dedicated to lifting up communities in need.
Brian describes the greater goals of the ACT program, why it is needed, what the issues or challenges it is meant to address, and what opportunities it is designed to unlock. The ACT Deposit Program was launched in the summer of 2024 by the national trade associations representing Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) and Minority Depository Institutions (MDIs). Brian explains how the ACT program works and defines the role of CDFIs and MDIs in delivering the intended impact and benefits of the program. He shares his views on why this program has strong appeal to family offices and enterprise families.
Delving into the practical details of how the ACT program functions, Brian details the mechanics of the program, including some of the key elements family members and family office executives should be aware of, such as minimum deposits, interest rates earned, minimum maturity, etc.
Brian also talks about what families and family office leaders can do to get involved with and take advantage of the ACT program. He offers an overview of existing resources and tools for them to get educated and ready to participate and contribute to the positive impact of this program.
Enjoy this timely and informative conversation with a leading champion of the ACT program and long-time thought leader and practitioner in the impact banking space.
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Today, I am delighted and honored to welcome Jason Ingle, founder and Managing Partner of Third Nature Investments, an integrated impact capital platform investing in the most promising innovations to address urgent and massive challenges we face within our most critical earth systems. Jason is a 5th generation member of the Ford family. He currently serves as the board chair for the family office and as a member of the investment and governance committees and is also a member of the family council and previously served as the chair, and he serves as a board director of the Ford Fund, the philanthropic arm of Ford Motor Company. Jason is a founding member of The ImPact, a membership network of family enterprises, including family offices, foundations, and businesses, that are committed to making investments with measurable social impact.
The Enterprise Family/FO space is full of important and sometime baffling polarities – one prominent one is between promoting the “togetherness” of the family as a whole while concurrently enabling the “individuality” of each family member. Jason talks about how his family, and himself personally, dealt with this polarity of togetherness vs. individuality and found the right balance.
FOX research among rising-gen family members shows that finding their role in the enterprise, and by extension their purpose more broadly, is a top priority – and often a pain point – for emerging family leaders and younger family members. Jason’s journey took him from being less involved and connected with the family enterprise to eventually playing a key role in the governance and leadership of the family. He shares how his journey unfolded and what he learned from it.
One significant outcome of Jason’s personal journey within his family enterprise was his discovery of impact investing – and impact more broadly – as a core value and purpose to which he concluded he wants to dedicate his time, attention, and capital. He shares how that process worked and how he landed on this most important point of relevance to himself personally.
Jason offers his suggestions and practical tips for family leaders and family members who are thinking about effectively catalyzing their rising-gen members and getting them more actively involved in the work and life of the family as a shared enterprise.
Impact is possibly the most important priority and objective most enterprise families arrive at. Jason provides his suggestions for family members who are looking to either start their impact journey or become more involved in the global impact movement. He also describes the organization he is part of – The ImPact – and how families can get involved, contribute, and benefit from it.
Don’t miss this unique conversation with a prominent family leader, philanthropist, entrepreneur and impact investor who is an active and generous member of the FOX community.
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This week, I am pleased to welcome Dale Buckner, CEO and President of Global Guardian, a leading provider of best-in-class security, medical and travel-related solutions. Dale is a decorated Combat-Commander with multiple combat tours and classified operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Colombia, Haiti and Cuba and executed deployments to Russia, El Salvador, Honduras, Chile, Panama, Kuwait, and Qatar. He is a thought leader in the industry with recent features on CNN, Politico, NPR, The Hill, Bloomberg, Forbes, and other major media outlets. Dale, and his firm Global Guardian, are Premier Risk Management Resource Partners of FOX and we are excited to have the unique expertise they bring to our membership community.
Having been involved in managing global security risks for the better part of 2 decades, Dale offers his analysis of how the threat environment has evolved for multigenerational enterprise families over the past 20-30 years. We are in a global environment punctuated by domestic polarization, regional conflicts, more frequent and destructive natural disasters, to name just a few of the major disruptors impacting families. Dale shares his views on the top threats that enterprise families and their family offices face today.
The most common risk management tool families rely on is insurance. But how much can insurance actually do to mitigate the most significant risks families face? Dale goes over the limitations and loopholes of insurance coverage that families and family office need to be aware of.
Technology now permeates everything the family office does, which both fuels remarkable advancements of productivity, speed, and quality of services the family can benefit from, but also creates significant new risks. Dale describes the current state of digital risks and cybersecurity for family offices and the families they serve.
This is a highly insightful and instructive conversation with a deep expert, hands-on operator, and thought leader in the field of security and risk management for enterprise families and family offices.
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This week, I have the pleasure of speaking with Stacy Allred & Holly Isdale. Stacy is a Managing Director and Head of Family Engagement and Governance at J.P. Morgan Wealth Management. She serves on the faculty of the UHNW Institute and teaches for the Investment & Wealth Institute® (CPWA®) program. Holly is the founder of Wealthaven, a family office consulting firm she founded in 2010 after 20-plus years on Wall Street. She is also a Senior Advisor with Lansberg Gersick, a global consulting firm advising significant families on governance and succession planning. Holly teaches at Wharton and Cornell in their Executive Education programs for family office and family business members, including a new Wharton Family Office program in January 2025 for Family members seeking to explore family office governance and operation. Stacy and Holly are both members of Collaboration for Flourishing Families (CFF) and the Purposeful Planning Institute (PPI). They are both active in Family Firm Institute (FFI) and each hold certificates in Family Business Advising and Family Wealth Advising.
In their work with families, Stacy and Holly are commonly brought in during a time of transition – between generations, between life stages, between wealth structures, between business, investments, or philanthropic activities – and they reflect on the most common challenges, considerations, and opportunities they believe families in transition face.
Stacy recently co-authored The 10x10 Learning Roadmap: Advancing Flourishing in Families of Wealth with Stephen Goldbart & Joan DiFuria, who were on this podcast a couple of months ago. Stacy gives our audience a quick refresher on the 10x10 framework and points out how it can help families in transition and enable their long-term success.
The 10x10 Learning Roadmap is a powerful and practical framework, but real-life situations sometimes don’t lend themselves perfectly to even the best of conceptual frameworks. Holly talks about how families and their advisors can “work around the framework” whenever they face complexities and idiosyncrasies resulting from their unique DNA and circumstances.
Having talked about how family members and their external advisors can benefit from the 10x10 Learning Roadmap, Stacy focuses on the other entities and constituents that comprise the broader family enterprise, such as the family office, the family council, the various committee members, the trustees, etc. She provides her insights into how these diverse players who have widely ranging roles within or in support of the family can utilize the 10x10 framework to help the family flourish.
Enjoy this illuminating and instructive conversation with two of the best recognized and celebrated practitioners and advisors in the family wealth and well-being space.
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Today, I have the pleasure of speaking with John Samuels, Founder and CEO of Better Health Advisors. For over 20 years, John served as a senior healthcare leader in New York City’s top hospitals including Northwell Health and Mount Sinai Beth Israel. As Assistant Vice President of Emergency Medicine, he was responsible for the operation of 16 emergency departments and a rapidly expanding network of urgent care centers. John is a licensed nursing home administrator in New York and New Jersey, and has served on the boards of directors for Mary McDowell Friends Academy, the Phillips School of Nursing at Mount Sinai Medical Center, the 360 Academic Sports Academy, the National Association of Healthcare Advocacy Consultants, and the Sepsis Alliance.
John’s philosophy, which also underlies his company’s mission, is that superior healthcare planning and services are about mitigating risk intergenerationally. In our conversation, he elaborates on this way of thinking about healthcare and its implications for enterprise families of significant means.
John also advocates for a wholistic approach to the health and wellness needs and solutions for enterprise families and their individual members. He tells us what he means by that and what is the scope of his definition of holistic healthcare.
John then offers some practical tips and suggestions for families who want to be proactive about managing their health risks and wish to take a holistic approach to their healthcare needs and services. He also provides his practical advice for family members or family leaders who find themselves in a reactive or urgent situation involving the health of a family member, sharing some of the resources or actions they should consider in these critical situations.
This is a must-hear conversation with a leading domain expert in the field of generational family wellness and holistic healthcare for enterprise families.
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It is my pleasure today to speak with Kim Ledger, Senior Vice President of Complex Assets for Ren, Inc., North America’s largest independent philanthropic solutions provider. Kim advises donors on the charitable opportunities presented by non-cash assets such as business interests, IPO stock, private equity, hedge funds, real estate, and artwork. Kim launched the firm’s complex asset practice in 2018 and has since worked with donors seeking to distribute nearly $3 billion in assets. Kim is also the host of Ren’s Philanthropic Insights video podcast.
Everyone in our industry is talking about the “Great Wealth Transfer” that is upon us, with an estimated $84T of assets expected to pass down from members of the Silent and Baby Boomer generation to Gen-X and Millennial inheritors. Kim shares her views on the role of philanthropy in this impending Great Wealth Transfer and explains how ready families can best utilize philanthropic vehicles to achieve their goals and cement their legacy.
At the same time, Donor Advised Funds (DAFs) and private foundations have emerged as powerful and popular vehicles to help families put their philanthropic capital to work. Kim offers an overview of the benefits of DAFs and a primer on how they can help families fulfill their purpose and vision and support the communities and causes that are important to them.
Kim then delves in to unpack one very practical and increasingly common philanthropic vehicle among enterprise families – the business interest gift, whereby families donate a portion (or the entirety) of their operating business or a portfolio company to a DAF as part of their philanthropic strategy. She provides valuable tips on how business interest gifts work and how families can make the most of this giving tool.
Another unique opportunity available to families pertain to so-called “passion assets” – including art, classic cars, and other collections. Kim offers her advice on the best ways families can leverage these passion assets in their philanthropic giving strategies.
Don’t miss this highly practical and insightful conversation with one of the foremost experts on philanthropic solutions for UHNW families.
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Today, I have the pleasure of speaking with Diana Chambers, founder of the Chambers Group, and a highly respected Family Wealth Mentor and Philanthropic Advisor. A G3 member of a former UK-based business family herself, Diana is a confidante and advisor to many enterprise families, helping them own, spend, and allocate their wealth wisely. Known for championing the human side of wealth, Diana is a sought-after speaker and the author of “True Wealth: Letters on Money, Life, and Love” and her influential essay “Money Wisdom Unlocked: Understanding Trauma as a Key to Your Financial Behavior”.
In her work with families, Diana emphasizes the importance of “financial EQ” or “the heart of money” as she calls it. She talks about what she means by “financial emotional intelligence” and why it is important for families, family office executives, and family wealth advisors to understand and practice financial EQ.
Money and wealth can be a blessing, but more often than not, it can also be a burden. Diana introduces the connection between money and trauma, and how families can stay educated on the topic and prepare themselves and their individual members to face and overcome the potential psychological challenges that come with wealth.
Diane offers her tips and suggestions for our audience on how to anticipate and be prepared for difficult or awkward conversations involving money and wealth. She offers useful examples of difficult or tricky topics members of wealthy families can encounter and provides some guidance on how they should best navigate them.
Enjoy this inspiring conversation with a world-renowned thought leader and practitioner in the family wealth and well-being.
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Today, I’m excited to speak with Tim Daum, co-founder of Veltracon Lifestyle, a Swiss lifestyle management company offering tailor-made solutions for UHNW clients. Veltracon caters to a broad range of lifestyle needs, ranging from luxury and collectible autos, exclusive events, private education, luxury goods, art, luxury travel, private security, and medical concierge. Tim has been active in the lifestyle management industry for nearly 10 years, and prior to Veltracon, he founded Swiss Private Education Network and at Swiss Private Clinic Network.
Tim provides an overview of the lifestyle and concierge space serving UHNW individuals and multigenerational families, covering the full scope of needs and services that are commonly in demand by UHNW clients. He also describes how the lifestyle and concierge industry has evolved in the past couple of decades and outlines the major trends shaping the space and how they differ among UHNW families from different countries and cultures across the globe.
Tim and his firm assist their clients with a broad set of unique needs and highly bespoke services, and he shares some of the tips he has for UHNW families who are considering or using private lifestyle services and solutions.
Nowadays, health and wellbeing are quickly becoming the most in-demand segment of the lifestyle concierge space. Tim and Veltracon have created a special subsidiary of focused on medical concierge and emergency preparedness solutions. Tim offers his advice for families of wealth about how they should approach bespoke medical care and holistic health and well-being risk management solutions.
Please enjoy this informative and practical conversation with a highly specialized and knowledgeable provider of niche and bespoke solutions in the UHNW lifestyle space.
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Today, I am delighted to speak with Kent Lawson, FOX’s own CTO and the leader of the FOX Technology Partners Program. Kent brings 25 years of experience as a professional in the wealth management industry, with a deep focus in technology for the family office. Prior to joining FOX, Kent spent a decade as an executive at a single-family office, and in that capacity, he was an active FOX member and a strong contributor to the FOX community. He also served as a business analyst and consultant for Advent Software, as COO of a trust company, and other technology solution vendors.
Kent is one of very few people in the world who have had a front-row seat throughout the evolution of the family office as an operational unit and the emergence of the ecosystem of technologies that are focused on supporting and automating family offices. He provides a brief overview of the last 10 years of how family offices, and the specialized technology solutions that serve them, have evolved. Given this historical context, he then delves into what it all means for family offices today, going over what they need to know and what key capabilities they need to develop or acquire.
As we see in our daily interactions with families and family offices at FOX, pretty much every family office faces two major challenges on their digital transformation path – technology selection and technology implementation. Kent offers his practical advice for family offices and advisor firms who are looking to select and implement FO-specialized technology solutions, highlighting the common pitfalls, and offering practical tips and shortcuts to success.
Keeping up with all the new and existing providers of technology solutions for the FO space is another significant challenge. Kent provides valuable suggestions for how family office professionals and leaders can stay educated on all the vendors and their platforms, on all the trends and developments in the FO technology space, and on the best practices related to digitizing the family office and the ever-broader set of family wealth management services.
Do not miss this deeply insightful conversation with the world’s leading technology expert in the family office and family wealth space.
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Today, I have the pleasure of speaking with Richard Wolkowitz, Founder of Xylogenesis Family Office Advisory. Rich serves as a family advisor with 25+ years of first-hand, inner-working experience of multiple family offices. His background is in law, business, management, operations, financial services, independent board service, and professional service firm leadership with a focus on serving multigenerational families and their full business and life continuum of needs.
Throughout his career, Rich has served many multigenerational families and one thing he has witnessed often how families would get stuck as they try to build, transition, or manage their enterprise. He shares his observations on how and why families tend to get stuck in the course of their complex journeys. The obvious question then is: How can families get “unstuck”? Rich talks about the mindsets, strategies, and activities that can help families overcome the main challenges that get them stuck.
Rich offers some practical pointers and suggestions for family leaders and family members who find themselves stuck and want to “right the ship” as they steer the family enterprise forward. He also shares his advice to family advisors and service providers who support the family, and provides some tips on how family wealth advisors, expert vendors, and service providers across different vertical disciplines can help the families they serve get unstuck.
Enjoy this insightful conversation with a prominent practitioner in the family wealth and family office space.
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Today, I have the pleasure of speaking with Lou Sokolovskiy, CEO and Founder of Opus Connect, a leading networking and deal-making community for private equity and M&A professionals. Lou is a serial entrepreneur with extensive private equity transaction experience. He founded multiple entrepreneurial ventures in the technology arena and has unique expertise in operations management, strategic partnerships, and new business development. He is a former consultant who has advised many companies in the healthcare management, finance, and technology industries on improving operations and corporate strategy.
Lou founded Opus Connect to provide a platform for PE and M&A professionals to connect, collaborate, and succeed in their work. He talks about the opportunity – or gap – he saw in the private investing marketplace, why he created this community, and how it is creating value for different players in the private deal-making ecosystem.
UHNW families and their family offices are increasingly active and sought-after participants in the private direct investing space – they are seen as patient, long-term, values-driven investors. At the same time, they often lack capabilities or create obstacles for themselves that prevent them from partaking in the most attractive deals. Lou explains why that happens and what families and family office executives can do to overcome these weaknesses and ensure they are seeing the best deals.
One tip Lou has for family offices who want to be active private investors is to formalize their investment thesis and decide what they are looking for and what deals they want to see. He shares with our listeners why this is important and how family office investors should go about it.
Another practical suggestion Lou offers for family office investors is to develop a strong network and functioning mechanisms to connect with external PE firms, deal sponsors, and other sources of quality deal flow in the marketplace. He explains why this is an important strategy and how do you advise family offices should best implement it.
Enjoy this informative conversation with one of the leading players and community organizers in the private investing ecosystem.
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Today, it is my pleasure to speak with Kathy Parker & Seth Webber of BerryDunn, a leading national professional services firm providing assurance, tax, and consulting services to businesses, nonprofits, and government agencies throughout the US. Kathy is a Principal and the Practice Group Leader of the Outsourced Accounting Practice Group at BerryDunn Boston and Seth is the Head of the Valuation Services Practice Group at BerryDunn. Kathy and Seth, and their firm BerryDunn, are a valued resource partner of the FOX community, and we are proud to offer their expertise and thought leadership to our members.
In their work, Kathy and Seth advise many multigenerational families and, among the many challenges and needs they assist them with, succession planning is both the most common and most important priority they are working on. Kathy and Seth talk about what you they see among enterprising families who are planning or working on succession planning and identify the common themes and the key challenges and opportunities they are facing.
Each family is, of course, unique, but there are common patterns and archetypes, especially correlated with how advanced the family is in its multigenerational journey. Kathy and Seth share their observation of how succession planning and the key priorities and activities associated with family transitions vary based on where the family is in its enterprise journey.
From a practical standpoint, Kathy and Seth offer some of their tips and suggestions for families that are embarking on their succession journey, including how they should get ready for the process and prepare to engage the many advisors they will inevitably rely on.
Kathy and Seth also provide some practical ideas for families to utilize once they are fully engaged in the intergenerational succession and wealth transfer process. These include how they should work with the different expert advisors to create the many technical structures and documents that will govern the journey and its outcomes.
You would not want to miss this expert conversation with these two distinguished expert in the family wealth management and intergenerational transitions space.
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Today, I am truly pleased to welcome Dave Donnelly, Managing Director, at SpiderRock Advisors, which was recently acquired by BlackRock and is now part of the firm’s US Wealth Advisory business. Dave is responsible for the client-facing business at SpiderRock and, prior to the acquisition, led SpiderRock’s sales organization and national accounts efforts across wealth and institutional client segments. Dave and SpiderRock are Specialist Advisor members of FOX and we are grateful for the unique and valuable expertise they bring to our membership community.
This conversation focuses our attention on options as a powerful tool in the toolbox of actively investing family members and family office CIOs. Dave provides and overview of how options overlay strategies can create value and unlock attractive possibilities for enterprise family portfolios.
We are in a very dynamic and constantly shifting geopolitical, microeconomic, and financial markets environment, and family offices are tasked with balancing a number of, often competing, investment objectives, such as returns, risk, liquidity, and taxes, to name just a few. Dave shares some of the most notable opportunities in the current macro context that options strategies can afford to enterprise families and their family offices.
Dave goes on to suggest several attractive practical tools that family offices can deploy utilizing options strategies, such as a portfolio mapping exercise to manage or swap away various risks or maximizing the tax-deductibility of their borrowing (e.g., margin or LOCs). He describes these strategies in detail and points our listeners to how UHNW investors can activate them.
Dave also offers his insights into the best resources for family members who are active investors and for family office CIOs to get educated and equipped with the right tools to activate these advanced options strategies and take advantage of the great benefits they offer.
Do not miss this technical and educational conversation with one of the market leaders and foremost innovators in the options overlay strategy advisory space.
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This week, I am delighted to welcome Matt Wesley, Principal at the Lovins Group. Matt is an internationally recognized practitioner, thought leader, and speaker on the issues facing financially successful families. With a career that spans 34 years as an estate planning attorney, family advisor, facilitator, and consultant, he helps families address the complex issues of family enterprises, legacy wealth, and collective philanthropy. As a Principal at the Lovins Group, Matt works with some of the most prominent families in the world as they seek to realize the full promise of intergenerational wealth in their individual and collective lives.
In the family wealth space, some advisors approach their clients’ needs from the standpoint of the technical expertise and quantitative, structured solutions that can benefit the family. Others approach their advisory work from the perspective of the qualitative sciences that deal with human behavior, family psychology, and interpersonal dynamics. Matt is a believer in the fundamental importance of culture – or what he has labeled “groupness” – which is not often the point of departure for family advisors. He shares his philosophy and describes how it is different from other approaches and how it creates incremental value for families.
In his work, Matt emphasizes the concept of “forgiveness” as a fundamental prerequisite and event driver of family culture and the collective personality of the family. He explains why forgiveness is important and how it plays into the process of developing and solidifying the family “groupness” or culture.
One powerful culture-building tool Matt recommends for families is stories and storytelling. He talks about why and how stories are important and suggests some practical ways families can put stories to work in their work of planning, preparing, and navigating the family’s multigenerational journey.
Another tool for family unity and togetherness Matt advocates for is family rituals. He shares his views on why rituals and elaborates on what they are and what their function is in the process of building a healthy, vibrant family culture and enduring unity among family members.
This is a must-hear conversation with one of the leading thinkers and practitioners in the family wealth advisory profession who is both technically sophisticated and keenly focused on the family’s long-term purpose and well-being.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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