AUTHOR OF ‘INTERDEPENDENT WEALTH’ TALKS ABOUT FAMILY SYSTEMS THEORY

0:12
So welcome again. This ride Zeb and my guest today is deep leg who’s up in the Great North. Great North, I guess way north today in the Northeast in the Atlantic timezone. And Steve and I have known each other for a while I think we met at ppi back in the day. So and the reason I want to have Steve on here is he wrote a great book called and interdependent wealth. And there’s some some gems in there that I think will be applicable to a lot of different people here. So let’s start Steve with welcome. And tell us a little bit about why you wrote the book. I mean, what’s the you will do a Simon Sinek here why did it start with why why did you write the book?

0:54
So first of all, thanks rod for having me. It’s always great to talk about all this family kind of stuff with you because I know you get it and I get it and and so we can have great, interesting conversation. So in order to frame how the book came about, I grew up in a family business. I was supposed to take over for my dad, we had a liquidity event along the way of running our small family office for longer than I care to admit into my mid 40s. And then I discovered a program in Canada called FPA family enterprise advisor. And I stumbled into this program in Toronto with a bunch of people who worked for banks or investment managers or they sold life insurance or they were accountants and they were all there because they had a lot of family business clients. And they wanted to learn what makes those families tick so they could serve them better. And I really had nothing in common with those people. But there were people up at the front of the room who were talking about working with families and figuring out their vision and their values and their goals, and preparing the rising generation and having family retreats and all this and I was like wait a sec. Is that a thing? Like people do that for a living? It was like, I could have had a VA and I finally figured out what I wanted to be when I grew up. And I was like 48 And during that first module of that course, which lasted like almost a year with seven different modules of two or three days. We learned that the family is a system and I was like okay, and the family has a system I get those words. They seem to make sense. I learned enough of it to pass the exam to get my designation. But then one day I was sitting at my desk, and I saw something about Bowen family systems theory. And I clicked on and started to read and I went oh, that’s that system stuff. They were teaching us and I was like, this seems really important to learn and then every where I looked up about family business and Bowen family systems theory, people seem to be saying, Oh, if you’re working with families and business families, it’s really good to know this Bowen stuff. And I said, Okay, I buy that. Let me go find a book that is out there. That explains to me why people who work with business families should understand Bowen family systems theory. So long story short, I could not find sedbuk There are other books about Bowen family systems theory, but that book that I was looking for, did not seem to exist. So instead, I embarked on some Bowen family systems theory training first for a couple of years with someone in Vermont. So that’s about an hour and a half from my home and on the south shore of Montreal. And so I started to learn about Bowen theory there and was very, very intrigued. And then I went to the mecca of Bowen theory, the Bowen Center in Washington DC at Georgetown. I spent a couple of years in the postgraduate program there as well. And then I finally said, Okay, now I know enough to write the book that I was looking for, not to say that I’m an expert in it, because in terms of the Bowen world where I still interact with people that most of the people who are there have been at it for decades, and so I’m like, you know, five or six years into my bow and experience. I’m still the new guy in town. But I knew enough to write the book to explain to people who work with families, why they might be interested in going down a similar road, and then explaining to those who don’t want to jump into the deep end at least what’s what it’s all about.

4:27
And I was going to ask you, and so when you graduate from Bowen,

4:31
and so you don’t never do. And I cover that in the book. It’s not like, you go and you take the course and now you have your diploma. In fact, the first course I took in Vermont, I thought it was a course and it’s not a course it’s a it’s a training program. So if this was a once a month thing, and it started in September, and then it ended in April, and in March, Eric Thompson, the guy who runs the program in Vermont says, I just want to ask how many of you are planning to come back again next year, and I go, what I put up my hand I said, sorry. I told my wife I was taking a course. And if I tell her that I’m gonna go back again next year, she’s gonna think I failed. So what’s the deal here? And so the best analogy I figured for this, it’s like a yoga class or an exercise class. A bunch of people get together. There’s someone at the front of the room who’s the expert who leads them. And some people are there for the first time. Some people have been there for five years and you all go through it and you all exercise those muscles. And then at the end of it, you’re all further ahead, and then some of you will come back and others won’t. And that’s my understanding of the bowl and world. I think there started to be some people who, who’ve tried to create programs with some kind of certificate after because they realized there was this void and people were doing the work and want to be able to hold something up and prove that they did something. I’m not sure that Marie Bowen would have loved that. And I’m not sure it’s really going to stick the way some people hope it does. Because even my book, it’s all about Bowen, family systems theory. I don’t have the word Bowen on the front cover anywhere in the title because I already recognized that as soon as I wrote this book, some of the, the real pure Bowen people aren’t gonna like what I wrote, right? And that’s okay, too.

6:21
Right? And you can’t teach it like he did there. I mean, and I remember seeing one video and he’s teaching in college and he’s standing up front smoking and this is the 80s or whatever. 70s or

6:31
black and white videos of him chalkboard all over him, and he grown squares and circles are drawn to the grounds that he’s smoking a cigarette, but he had such a way of explaining things in a in a patient way, even though he knew so many people didn’t get it or were skeptical, and he just kept going and going and so you got to add it to the guy and he died in 1990 is 30 years later, and there’s still people that are out there that are disciples and and spreading the word and I want it to be one of the ones Who’s spreading the word. But there are people that take it like way too. You know, literally to the nth degree. And I think in order to just use enough of it to be able to work better with families and when you walk into a family system to kind of recognize some things that are happening that if you didn’t understand this theory would be a lot it would wouldn’t be nearly as clear and so we walk in and you can actually see some things that are happening. And they make sense to you a lot more quickly. Because you have this model that you can look at them or this lens that you’re looking at them through.

7:41
Yeah, and that’s one of the I mean, his his is all backed therapy, I mean family therapy and clinical psychiatrist and all that kind of stuff that’s ever gonna go. But most of most people who have worked with families have experienced this system. They just didn’t know what it was or what it’s called.

8:00
Right, right, exactly. And then there’s the whole part about recognizing that they are the system and I’m the outsider to the system. And, and although part of me is tempted to try and get inside the system, because they’ll like me better and I’ll understand it better. There are dangers inherent in that and you need to respect the system and your position on the outside of it and recognize that you can do your work much better from the outside and that sometimes getting into it too deeply compromises your ability to do a lot of the things that you as the independent objective outsider need to remain on the outside. So I’ve had, you know, a great meeting with a family and they say, Yeah, we’re all gonna go for dinner and I wanted to come and join us and as much as part of me would say, Yeah, sure. Let’s do it. It should be fun. I’ve got to respect that line and say, no, no, no, no, no, no, I, I need to. I’m already as deep as I need to be and I don’t want to go down that slippery slope.

9:02
Yeah. And that is one of the things we’ve trained forever is, you know, keep your professional distance. I mean, they’re asked to keep the repression relationship. And when that gets compromised, there’s all sorts of issues that come up with that, and especially with parts of the family, I mean, I may not be everybody but parts of the family.

9:16
It’s it’s very tempting, and it’s hard sometimes to say no, but I’ve always afterward looking back said I’m glad I said no.

9:27
And they want to I mean, it’s not that they’re just being polite. They really want you to do that. So as you think about the book and you know if I’m if somebody’s just listening to this and going okay, why should I read this book? I mean, what is it that I’m gonna get out of this? Just to describe a little bit about, like you said, some of the some of the key points of the of the whole book. Well,

9:45
so what I recognized is that there are a bunch of people who work with business families. And wealthy families, and most of them don’t understand much about Bowen theory. And if you go the other way and go to the Bowen world, the Bowen people that I interacted with during my time in those training programs, most of them were psychologists or therapists of some sort, or they were clergy, and only maybe 10% were people who worked with wealthy families or business families. And so there was this Bowen world over over here and there is this people who work with family business over there, and there’s this little bit of overlap. And I love the fact that I could be in that overlap part and I wanted to see how can I make it bigger? And so what I tried to do and there’s there’s 15 main topic chapters in the book, and each one of them is what I call an overlap of those two worlds. So whereas we draw a genogram in the Bowen world, and in a family business or family holding company, you might have a diagram with all the different holding companies in the trust and all that. Well. I talked about, you know, drawing the picture and what you guessed in the picture, and I contrast, well in the bone world, this is how we draw our pictures and in the family business world is that we draw pictures and draw some parallels. And in Bowen, there’s this concept of triangles and so we talked about triangles here. And in a family you have everyone has their own triangle of their their parents and them and how they grew up and then they have their and the interlocking triangles with the siblings. And so I have a chapter about triangles. So I have 15 different chapters that each have identified different aspects of these two worlds and where they overlap. So you can almost start and read them in any order. Because they’re all independent, almost Chicken Soup for the Soul type of thing. So you don’t have it doesn’t necessarily flow. I figured it was kind of like a buffet with 15 different chapters that hopefully, anyone who reads it will pick up you know, two or three different things that they didn’t know they didn’t realize that so the next time they walk in to a family something they’ll jump out at them and go, Oh, wait a sec, this is Oh, I see what’s going on here and be able to understand it a little bit better. Plus, I know that there are a lot of Bowen people that don’t understand how their stuff works with business families that were curious. And so I’m hoping that some of them it opened their eyes a little bit because you know, this world of business families and wealthy families people look at it and go, Oh, it’s the Holy Grail if I can get some of those families if we’re going to like kings and and it doesn’t necessarily work that way. But a lot of people are tempted to go after this kind of clientele.

12:42
Yeah. And it’s even just the word genogram. That’s, you know, people are saying do you do Genograms? Well, if you Google it, Jason Graham has everything from like would you do in the Bowen? world and all that to basically an annotated family tree you know, and that’s you know, so you do need you do need in the family stuff you need that annotation you know, who relates well with what are their landmines know those kinds of things. But you don’t necessarily you don’t want to get into the therapy part of this. So that’s that’s the were the

13:14
whole Murray Bowen didn’t actually call it a genogram. So he called them family diagrams and the word that people use, and I, whenever I discussed this with people, people say, oh, you know, don’t share the genogram with the family or the SATs, like whoa, wait a sec. This. This reminds me of this Seinfeld episode, where Elaine went to the doctor, and the doctor wrote something in the file that she was a difficult patient. And he left the file there when she left the room. She opened it up and it pissed her off, and so understand it and so so I always say well, wait a sec, it’s important to draw the genogram and the family should help you draw the genogram. And to get the factual part, everyone should have the same starting factual genogram. Now the notes that you’re right on it and whether or not you share them and with whom do you share them? That’s a whole other question. But let’s at least start by getting all the facts on the table. This is the Father This is the mother they were born in this year married and this year this child was born, put the children in the right order, and then dried properly to get the facts and I remember when I first in that family enterprise advisor program we were taught about drawing these family diagrams and I thought Ooh, who’s gonna do this? This is a lot of work. What’s the point? And sure enough, as I got into this work, now I get a phone call from someone. And I’m drawing the genogram in the first call, trying to figure out who’s who. Because that’s once you know that that’s the way to gather the information because it’s it’s a it’s a nice shorthand way of recalling all the relationships in the ages and the sibling order and this one in that. And that’s how, that’s how people who do the kind of work I do typically do it and if they’re not, I’m not so sure they’re doing it right.

14:58
Now and you gotta have got them next. When you think about does it only apply this host family system things only apply if you’re working with the entire family? Or does it apply if you’re lucky duck, one generation you start with mom and dad or something?

15:19
So the theory gives you a view on what’s going on in the entire family system. Hopefully theoretically, once you get all the information about all the different players. But even what so my first bone Coach Eric went when I remember telling him that a guy from a family approached me and I was trying to figure out how I could work with the family. And Eric said, Well, maybe you could just work with him. And I thought, What the hell what the heck is that? I’m like, I’m a facilitator. I don’t work with family groups. And it’s only later that I realized, oh, okay, so this is what Marie Bowen was also saying was, if you can find a family leader, and help that family leader to better understand and lead their family, even if you never meet all the rest of the family, you can help that whole family system evolve incredibly without even ever meeting the people. And then it was like this, the exclamation mark was I remember learning about Marie Bowen, when he started working with schizophrenic teenagers and young adults. And he got to the point where the parents would come to him. And they’d say, we think that there’s a problem with our child. And they’d say, can we bring our child to you? And eventually he would say, No, no, let me just work with the mom and dad. And he would work with mom and dad and decrease the anxiety between mom and dad, mom and dad related to each other in different ways. And guess what happened to the schizophrenic offspring. All of a sudden they got better and they didn’t have as many challenges, because really, where were the problems in that’s gonna fit somewhere in the person’s head. They were caused by parents. So if you can work with the parents and get the parents to relate in a more mature way with each other, that will that what happens in the emotional system of the whole family gets calmed down to where now all of a sudden, there’s less anxiety. Yeah.

17:29
And that family champion doesn’t necessarily have to be mom and dad.

17:33
No, oh, no. It needs to be someone who, who cares enough, who has enough interaction with the other players, but they also have to be able to stand up to everybody. So that that I position that Marie Boland talks about and I think I’m pretty sure I addressed it in the book, the the eye position is, you know, I am going to stand up and say this is what I believe in, and this is what I’m going to do. So I will not, you know, you’re trying to pressure me to do something, I will not do this. And I am standing firm, but now you got to hold on to that. Right. Anyone can get up in a meeting and say, I’m not putting up with this, but then you know, over the coming days, everyone’s trying to like twist your arm and get you to come back into the fold to be able to stand up to them again and say No, I said, I’m not going to do this. And I meant it. That by the time that person has to go through the challenges of holding that high position. It’s only after they’ve been challenged and they still hold it. That’s when then the rest of the family is kind of forced to adjust to them because now so any family leader can do that. But it’s not necessarily easy because you know, you will be challenged and you need to be because that’s like Bert Bowen said like, first of all people will say you’re wrong, I changed back or else right, because people don’t want the change and they don’t want someone else providing the impetus for the change that they don’t necessarily agree with. So it takes it takes a lot of strength and that’s where someone from the outside coaching that person can help that person to be able to develop and enunciate and maintain their eye position and hold to it which then changes the family system and evolve theoretically in the right direction, which is eventually good for everybody.

19:30
That’s, you know, it is it’s, it’s easy to make the declaration. Well, it’s easier to make the declaration than it is to hold the declaration. And that’s we did an exercise one time with with a family to kind of show this with just how if one person moves it changes everybody. Have you ever seen the library to it’s like a lacquer tube is a it’s a big Think of it like a nylon like a it’s like five foot tall in it. You can get six or seven people inside of it. So you get everybody inside and then everybody leans back. So everybody’s tight. And then you have one person move.

20:08
Oh, cool. Everybody’s got like, I’ve heard of like a string exercise, but this is the same thing like in 3d then 3d.

20:18
Yeah, you know, and so, the first time I did it, I got everybody in the family like this, and I nodded to the dad and the dad jumped into the middle while everybody’s like, you know, moves everything around. And then he climbs out and all the kids are looking around us and they realized, okay, this is gonna happen. And then Mom did the same thing. And then now it’s just the kids looking at each other. This is gonna, but it was a great visual and actual physical representation of the this is going to happen, you know, and one person needs

20:48
a memorable so yeah, that’d be the lived common experience. Right? So huge and that’s something they will all remember. And and you’re you’re happened to be coming right to a really important point that I always, you know, it’s so clear to me, what a family who is going to engage me is actually looking for even though they don’t know how to verbalize it. It’s typically we want to make sure that when we mom and dad are no longer here that these people who are our offspring will be able to work together and get along together and not have what we worked for screw them up or have them screw it up. Right. And but they don’t know that that’s what they want, but I know that that’s what they want. And so because I know where they’re trying to go, I can immediately jump in there with that sibling group of the offspring and start to get them to work on how do we work together. How do we communicate how who works well with who who’s good at what, who’s good at taking the lead on things who’s good at and, but the only way to do that is to kind of force them or push them into actually doing things together to practice that.

22:00
Right. And that’s the, you know, we build a lot of our stuff around what we call pre inherited experiences, which put the kids together and they have to you know, and they get to get the benefit of it, or the consequences, or whatever. But you know, until they’ve actually done it in real life together, it’s just theory. I mean, it’s one thing to be the leader in the office have to have whoever’s gonna make it happen. I mean, it was one thing so sometimes you need that person that’s not a good leader, but they make things happen and they they’re in the background and understanding who that is and how everybody works together is huge.

22:29
And understanding what the strengths are of all the different people in the family, right and trying to put people in the positions that go well with their strengths, so that you end up with a one plus one equals three every once in a while as opposed to oh, well, we need someone to do this and they’re not doing anything. So let’s stick them here. And then they’re not the right person. And it bogs down the whole system. So it’s and sometimes the parents are not the best people and identifying properly who those people are and and that’s where families often get the benefit of an outsider coming in more objectively to evaluate the family members and to help them work together better.

23:16
I think that was really politically correct to say sometimes they’re not I think it’s probably more than sometimes but it is I mean, it’s true. There’s there’s also the stereotypes. I mean, one of the first times I stood up a family counselor was talking to Mom and Dad and I said, What do you think? Well, the oldest son should be the president. The daughter should be the secretary. I’m like, no, no, no. Who’s got what strengths let’s talk about who they are not where they’re born. I mean, which what the birth order was and what sex they are. Yeah.

23:43
So you know, I said, I said the word help a minute or so ago, and I realized that that’s, that’s actually one of the chapters in the book where I talk about, I’m trying to get rid of the word help from my vocabulary. Because Because helping sort of sets up a upper upper lower or you know, you’re not I guess, like, I’m, I, I am up here and you’re down there and I’m going to help you and that doesn’t always it’s not always received, as well as it should be or could be. And the best example was, so this is my second bowling coach Amy from the bowling center. And I was on a coaching call with her and I was explaining that I wanted to help my wife. My wife comes from a business family and they’ve had their liquidity event and their stuff between her and her siblings. And me, given the kind of work that I do, I’m always trying to encourage her to do certain things that I know a lot of families that do well, it’s because they’ve done certain things and I’m on the outside trying to suggest and could suggest to her and cajole her into certain things. And so I’m talking to me as I’m trying to help my wife on this, this and she says, Well, what if instead of trying to help her, you just offered to be a resource to her. And I was like, let me that I said that that’s interesting. It’s just a small change. But it’s a huge change. So I finished that call. My wife comes down the stairs A few minutes later, and I said, Hey, remember, I told you that I wanted to help you with your family with us? She gives me this. Yes, of course, I remember. And I said, Well, what if what if instead, I said, I don’t want to do that anymore, and she was like, Oh, really? I said, Yeah, I said, But if, if ever you need me as a resource, I’ll be here for it. And she was like, okay, and I’ve and I’ve held to that I have not pushed or tried to, you know, one up one down your brain I will, I will be nice and help, you know, but you have something you want to talk to somebody about. I’m here. So I’ve tried to in as many places in my life as possible, offered to be a resource as opposed to a helper. It’s impossible to completely get it out of your vocabulary, but I’ve tried the I remember that

26:09
chapter. I was like, it really was pointed to me was I was reading I was going yeah, how many times have I said that? And it ended up being a wedge rather than a bridge, you know? So

26:21
I actually was on a call with somebody about a month ago, who read the book and told me he took that to heart and he actually was thanking me for that. I said, Well, I’ll pass on the thanks to Amy who gave. Actually, like, obviously, you can’t just change the words. That you use, you need to change the behavior. But if you take that heartland, once you understand what it is, it’s like, yeah, sometimes when people come to me and say, let me help you. I want to help you, but they they say it in such a judgmental I’m better than you I’m glad that someone as great as me is trying to help you poor loser up. Even if it’s not meant that way. Sometimes it lands that way. And that’s like you’re done before you even start if it’s if that’s the way it’s hurt.

27:14
That’s, that’s one of the few quotes I have from Richard Nixon. Because when he had a great quote, that was I know, you think you understood what I said, but I’m not sure what I said was what I met. And so you know, and that’s true. I mean, sometimes we use words that have connotations that that’s not what we meant at the time, but the word. Yeah.

27:37
And now you’re getting to one of my favorite quotes of all time is I think it’s George Bernard Shaw, who said, the biggest problem with communication is the assumption that it has taken place. It’s like yeah, I told you, I don’t know but I didn’t hear you or I didn’t understand you a little bit. I told you so. I did my part. If if whatever didn’t happen, then that’s it’s not my fault. It’s your fault. That’s why I always double checking Did you can you say that back what’s your understand? And look, I’m always it drives my wife and kids nuts but it’s like, I know how many things fall through the cracks based on the assumption that Yeah, you heard me and you understood me and you agree with me? Well, any one of those things can fall apart real quick,

28:23
right. Anything else that we should know here as we wind down,

28:28
I could talk about this stuff. I’m glad that I found the bow and world I’d glad I found it the way I did kind of imperfect and not exactly perfectly evolved so I could actually come in there and write something that I think is fresh around it for a group of people that, you know, working with families the way we do. There’s all kinds of things that you’re going to walk into and you don’t know what you’re going to walk into. So if you have a way of understanding how families fit together, work together, how important the emotional field is how important anxiety is, you know, if you can have a better understanding of that your odds of successfully being a resource to that family. I almost said helping I know the odds of you being a positive influence for that family go way up. And, and it’s, it’s, it’s been very useful to me and I know some people have read the book and it’s helped them as well and I hope it helps more people. And I hope more people get like the bow and bug and want to learn more. There’s now more online training programs for people who want to learn more. But don’t forget, this is like learning how to swim. If you can read all the books you want about learning how to swim and if I take you into the middle of the lake and in a boat and I throw you overboard and all you’ve ever done is read the books about it. Good luck. I need to practice it. And that’s the thing about Bowen theory, you can’t learn it from a book you can learn the basics of it, but to be able to use it you need to do the work on yourself. And what that means is drawing your own genogram understanding it and actually talking to the people in your family that are still alive and trying to learn about as much as you can about why your family is the way it is and what are the things that happen even before you were born. That made your dad be the way he is. And so one one project I was cajoled into doing was to you know, my my bone Coach Eric said, I think your relationship with your father is a little too subjective and you should work on making it more objective. And I said, Well, that sounds great, but he’s been dead for five years. And he said no problem. Murray Bowen said, Go and find the oldest surviving relative that’s still around. So on that urging, I went and I spent a half a day with my aunt who was my dad’s older sister, and the stories that she shared about her and my dad growing up, and the environment and what was going on. My God, it was like, I’ve had this knapsack for rocks. I’ve been dragging around with me forever, about my dad, that I was able to just take it off and drop it there. And walk away much lighter. Just having been able so that the objectivity was I my view of my dad was very subjective. It was based on what I thought, now that I had a different view from a different angle from someone knew Him who knew him from a different time. All of a sudden I had a much more objective view of him. I understood why he was the way he was. And I was able to forgive so many of the things that I mistakenly took as him being not nice to me or underestimated me or not giving me enough credit, all those things just went away. And so that’s the kind of work that when you work with a bowling coach, they can help you through these important things that are very much growth experiences. And I don’t know where I’d be if I had not done that kind of work. And I remember telling my wife is I don’t care if this stuff ever helps me with a client or a client family ever again. What this is doing as to me hopefully as a husband and certainly as a father, it is worth doing this work, because I am I am I understand my family and how it works and how it’s important for me to behave visibly visibly my family member much better than I did before.

32:47
And that ties into also just the way we work with families having the family story I mean, we talk about this all the time with with people you know, you need the family story in life lessons. Because in the abstract actions, reactions and things can be one thing if you know the family story and that what went into this, it does change how you view everything.

33:09
So many of the families always you know, tell the great stories of what made them great and they your skip over all the bad stuff and that’s it’s like no no no, no, no no tell those stories let that let your offspring know what those stories were because otherwise you they look at you as some kind of infallible giant and now they’re afraid to take any risk because they think I’m never going to be as great as grandma or grandpa. And I’ll never do it so I won’t try but if they know that, you know, it’s not how many times you get knocked down. It’s how many times you get back up and if you find out those stairs all of a sudden, you know things look different and everything’s more possible. And you actually learn from the resilience that’s built into your family DNA.

33:59
Well, that’s, you know, I was working with one guy, there’s business owner and he built this thing up and none of his kids were good enough to do this. I mean, nobody wanted to step into it. And he just couldn’t understand I said so is your business ever been in trouble? And of course if you’ve got a family because it’s been in those stories, like two or three stories about this I could cool. We get to know the stories. Well, no, I mean, he’s ever talked about as well. No wonder they look at you and they feel like they could never measure up. You know, what if they knew those stories, what would what would the different what difference would that make just that you know if nothing else? So yeah, it is. Good stuff. All right. So somebody wants to talk to you. We’ll put I guess, we can put on the thing. How do they get ahold of

34:49
you? I always you know, I’m lucky and I get this question a lot and I think I have a pretty good answer is like I’m lucky I have an easy name. Steve Legler. There’s only one vowel and and it’s the E it shows up but twice in the first time and yet it’s not a common name. So if you Google Steve Legler, you should end up finding the end. And if not, it’s Steve legler.com. And if you go to LinkedIn where I do have a lot of stuff on LinkedIn, like Steve Legler if you just put family business or whatever, I’m going to show up like right at the top and then anyone can I book an introductory call and just let’s talk. I know that I’m not destined to work with every family, but I love to talk about this stuff with anyone and if it doesn’t look like I’m the one who’s the best resource for them. I will try to point them to other people. I do know a lot of people in the space and people attack it from different angles and different people are in different geographies and different ways of working. I happen to know a lot of people through the purposeful planning Institute, through the family firm Institute, and hopefully I can help connect people for for the kind of resources they’re looking for.

36:01
You want to be a resource

36:06
doesn’t mean I don’t want to help. Help them I just want to be a resource. And no, all kidding aside. There are families that sometimes don’t know who to turn to. They think they’re the only ones whoever had this issue or this problem. And sometimes just having someone tell them oh yeah, I’ve seen this before. And yes, your situation is different than theirs. But I know what has worked in this situation or that situation. I’ve had people tell me oh my god. You understood in five minutes, but no one else could understand like, because there’s the people who do our kind of work. We don’t grow on trees and there aren’t gazillions of us. But there are people who understand what these families are going through. And sometimes just to know that they found someone who can hear them and understand them and sort of point them in the right direction. And maybe they’ll come back a year or two later when they say okay, now my family is ready to do something can can we work together. But maybe it’s just an introductory call those can give them a resource to tell them a different book to to read, tell them something they can join a group they can join where they can sort of start to get better informed on stuff

37:11
and just just to hearing that they’re not weird. I mean, that’s the there’s others like you, you know, I always love it when I get into a family so our family’s unique because we don’t communicate well, like seriously finding one that does

37:25
and they all think they’re the worst family. You must think we’re so horrible. And that’s where I love to have some like a real horror story but a true story, right? When I tell I sometimes share the story about like the matriarch who stood up in the meeting and told her sons that her nephews to go after themselves and then stormed out of the room and that happening oh, yeah.

37:49
Well, thank you very much for being on here. And we’ll hopefully we’ll get some some people reading the book because it has been a really helpful book for me just, you know, again, I’d seen all this stuff and I knew about Boeing and I’d done some research I’ve done some reading and you know, like, what the eight principles are and things like that.

38:06
But I wanted to bring it home to more concrete stuff that people who are kind of work and actually played it. We’re gonna go Oh, okay. Now this makes sense.

38:15
Yeah. It’s not written as a therapist, you know? Oh, no,

38:19
in my in my writing, and so yeah, if you go to my website, go and sign up. For my blog. I read a blog every week. I’ve been doing it there. I don’t know if I’m over 400, maybe 500 blogs. I read about 700 words every week. And I get a lot of great feedback on it mostly because I write it that like a seventh grade reading level, I write it in such conversation. I don’t try to like act smart and use acronyms like and I write it from my head in my heart. I try to share things I’ve learned and things I continue to learn about the kind of work that I do and I try to make it entertaining and informational. And and that’s like taking complex things and explaining them so everyone could understand that that happens to be one of my strengths. And so I that’s in the book, it’s in the blogs, and it’s in the how I try to work with families. And I plan to keep doing this for as long as I can. So it’ll never be too late to reach out. Okay, cool. Thank you very much. All right. Thanks, Ron. Talk to you soon.

This transcript was generated by https://otter.ai