The Best of 2025 (A Retrospective)

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0:23
Hello and welcome to another episode of The let’s talk family enterprise podcast. My name is Steve Legler, and I’m excited to be joined by Aileen miziolic, our other regular host. It’s that time of year for the annual retrospective episode where we go back over some of the highlights from some of the more memorable guests that we interviewed this year. We’re going to be discussing a wide variety of topics, from addiction to Frankenstein, from ownership to the dangers of comparing siblings and for not ruining your kids with wealth to being a facilitative consultant. There’s so much to cover, so I want to jump right in. Eileen miziolek, it’s great to be here with you doing this again.

1:05
Great to be here with you, Steve. We’ve had a fantastic year and a lot of breath in our discussions this year, so I’m looking forward to jumping in All

1:15
right, so we’re gonna alternate back and forth, and you’re gonna ask me about the episode I did with Dr Jeffrey foot,

1:25
yeah, so I thought this episode was very helpful, and that illuminated many of the myths that exist about addiction. What were your favorite takeaways from that episode?

1:37
Well, you know, at the beginning, we talked about how common sense. I said something about common sense. He is not very common. And in fact, there’s so many old cultural norms and the stigma that comes from what people see in movies and on TV about addiction that are really, really not helpful. And so that’s why I think reading his book was, you know, very eye opening in terms of a lot of the stuff we think we know isn’t really correct.

2:08
Yeah, you know, I found that really illuminating as well. And what resonated with me are a couple of things that science and kindness help people change, and that kindness has become evidence based and science backed, and that it’s the right thing to do, and that families are a unique resource and a very important resource in that initiative to help people with addictions.

2:35
Yeah, he was talking a lot about how advisors like us have a privileged position to advise families on matters like this, but then also about how family members can be key allies to helping their family members change. He talked about the fact that they’re an underutilized resource, and so maybe as advisors, if we can find opportunities to invite other family members to step into roles like that, to help their family members that we could get some mileage out of that. Yeah, I

3:10
love that. As a systems geek, I really love the way that conversation also included the lens of family systems thinking and that unfolding this together as a family is such a powerful part of this process.

3:27
There was another thing that I noted here when I re listened to it last week, is that, you know, people often think, usually like the parent who have now has to hire someone to fix their kid or whatever that, you know, just fix the addiction, and everything will be fine. So just make that one problem go away and everything will be rosy. And that’s rarely the case, because that problem exists in as part of a system where there are other things that are also going and not exactly in the right way for the family, for sure.

3:59
Yeah. How about the next episode in owning with with Barb Dart, yeah.

4:06
So let’s switch gears now and talk about episode 65 where you interviewed Barb Dart. About that book, own. It about ownership.

4:17
Yeah, I find that book to be such a really amazing resource when working with families, there’s just, it’s so rich with, you know, framing the different aspects of ownership for families and how to develop an ownership vision for a family enterprise.

4:38
And it’s interesting that, you know, she talks about how often in a sibling or a cousin group, they become a team of partners, but they didn’t really choose their partners, right? They got thrown into because of circumstances. And so now partners that didn’t choose to be partners together, that are stuck together, there’s some interesting issues that they have to learn to deal with. Yeah, I think

5:01
that speaks so strongly to the point that we do need to have a vision for ownership, and often, historically, that vision is often created by legal and tax experts, and it’s kind of sneaks up on the family that, Wow, we got to step back and see what we want for the future of the ownership group and how that will transcend the generations going forward.

5:29
Yeah, one of the notes that I wrote down here is that the group needs to practice making decisions together. And sometimes, you know, when they they get thrown into they own stuff. They don’t really know what it is. They’re not maybe they’re just beneficial owners, so they might have a voice, but not a vote, and it’s really confusing. And so as advisors, it’s really important for us to help them to understand what it is they own and how they own it, so that they can sort of create their vision together.

5:59
Yeah, one of the most powerful tools I found in the book to that point is the owner’s mindset. And I talked about how I use that even as a questionnaire and kind of a process where we look at, how does ownership look now? What’s our mindset around ownership now? And what does it need to be? What behaviors do we need to be successful together as a team? Because it’s, it’s a team. It’s not, you know, they’re not working in the business. Some of them may be in the business. Many of them are not in the business. And so I think Barb also talked a lot about what value owners bring that don’t work in the business, that come to different from different industries, and can contribute their expertise and their skill set in an ownership capacity, which is often not thought of a lot. You know, in traditional, you know, family businesses, you don’t think too much about those cousins who didn’t work in the business. What can they contribute? Right?

7:02
But in fact, like, because of diversity and different opinions and different perspectives, sometimes they can get the ones working in the business out of their group think issues. And I like the fact that she also talked about, you know, you need to have a team of advisors who see the whole family as the client and come and present options for the family owner group that that’s that’s a role that we play, that we see things from the outside, but we need to present things to them as a group so and help them make the best choices from all the opportunities that they

7:36
have, for sure, and it is so important because one of the differentiators of family business, and what makes them so successful over many generations, is the concept of patient capital. And patient capital requires educated owners that have a unified vision for the future, and it also is a quantifiable measure when people want to get their dividends out, but we have to, you know, we need money to grow the business. There’s always this tension between that, and so when when owners are all educated and focused in the same direction, we tend to see more patient capital, and that is a good sign for family businesses,

8:20
but it’s also a lot of work. Like even making the time for the owners to get together and meet and have meaningful conversations is a lot more work than people realize, and especially those who don’t work in the business, it’s sort of like an afterthought, but we need to make the time and help our clients make the time to come together and have these discussions. Yeah, for

8:43
sure, it’s really important. And that actually leads me to Episode 68 stop frankensteining it with Cindy Radu.

8:52
That was fun because we got to do another one on video, and we did it live at symposium, right after she had finished doing a session with a room full of people that was very well received. And then we went straight into recording a video version of the of the podcast again. And I think Cindy made a big important distinction between Frankenstein and Frankenstein’s monster. Frankenstein was the guy who came up with this, and he was well intentioned, but it turned out that he created a monster, and the sort of unintentional monster that sometimes gets created when families reach out to advisors to help them make plans for the future, things don’t always turn out as beautiful as They hoped.

9:38
Yeah, for sure, the advisors often don’t differentiate between cooperation and collaboration. That was another great point that she made, and collaboration is like solving a puzzle together, whereas cooperation is like a handoff and passing the baton and and when we pass the baton, we think that certain parts of planning are complete, and really it’s such an iterative process that we have to go in circles and see how things fit together, almost like framing a puzzle and then filling in all the pieces. That’s how I like to think about it.

10:17
Yeah. She also talked about how let the technical specialists usually take the lead. And really what we need to be driving towards, and I think that’s what the direction things are going, is that that, you know, we have to combine and integrate the technical specialists with the other hemisphere of the 10 domains model, of the people in the human capital side of it. And I like what you just said about the iterative part about it, because you cannot solve all of one and then go solve the other. You have to move, you know, there’s a parallel process that goes on in this kind of planning,

10:56
parallel and circular. I think, you know, and I think that we need to have advisors that are, you know, well versed in planning, and also, though, prioritize, I guess first the vision of the family, like anything, you know, we can’t plan for something that we have not, you know, envisioned together. It doesn’t work. And so I think a lot of that’s happened where there is not enough processing in the family, not enough discussion about where are we going as a family in our planning, and how are we going to integrate that? Because the other part of that is when you’ve worked with multiple generations and multiple branches in a family business, all that planning has to align and coordinate if we have a vision for we just talked about vision for ownership and vision for family and all those things have to align with every branch, having then estate plans that all flow up, you know, And don’t contradict one another and to achieve the right vision, or the vision that the family has charted

12:05
for itself. Well, so we started a minute or two ago talking about the issues around the advisors, but there’s also the issues within the family, where often it’s one person or a couple that go and see their advisor and they have not done the consultation with the rest of the family. There was one part that that happened in the room, and we addressed it on the episode, is like, what if the family leader had actually asked the family members what they thought? And you know, what if they had asked? Well, they would have learned something and somehow, learning what the rest of the family that you’re making these plans for. You know, getting their input really can be very helpful in creating a plan that’s actually going to work.

12:50
Yeah, and I guess I should just go back, because when I say creating a vision for the family, I mean, like, collaboratively, I’d like to see everyone involved in how do we want to plan together? How do we want this family to evolve? And how could it evolve in a way that there is everyone’s getting what they need, because we know that that’s different for each sibling, or everyone’s got such different lives and journeys, and, you know, and personalities and desires and stuff and so, yeah, I do think that we do need more processing together before we initiate the planning or through the planning process

13:33
and asking questions like that. We talked Cindy and I talked about there, where does this family want to go, and does the plan that they have fit and do they even understand it? Because that’s that’s a huge problem that I know we all encounter, is that everyone sort of thinks they understand what the plan is, but they’re often making an assumption that they all are agreeing on the same thing, which is very often not correct. Yeah, for sure. Let’s move on to the episode you did with Roger Schwartz on facilitation. I love the fact that he talked about the different kinds of roles that we could play. Are you a facilitator? Are you a consultant? Are you a facilitative consultant? And the different nuances in there? I really enjoyed that.

14:19
Yeah, you know, we had a really great conversation about that and and he admitted that he most often plays a facilitative consultant role, and I think that’s the role that we most often fall into. But we talked about how important it is to identify the role that we’re playing. And, you know, in the meetings that we’re having sometimes we switch hats and we become the facilitative trainer. And you know, he talked about times when he’s the facilitative mediator. And I think many of us have had that kind of experience in family conflict before. And you know, we had a good discussion of what it means to be a facilitator and the fact that people should bring all their skill sets to the facilitating role and not be shy to do what the system needs in the moment, because sometimes we get a little bit stuck in a certain maybe dogma what facilitation should Be. And the most important thing is that a facilitator cannot be part of the system that they’re facilitating for. So we have to be careful also not to get too enmeshed in the system. But you know, it’s okay to bring different mediation skills or coaching skills or consulting skills to that facilitator role.

15:41
I think, yeah, as you know, when we’re in the room with a family, we don’t know what is going to emerge and what the family will need now from us to come and help them make the progress to where they want to go. And sometimes it’s being completely neutral and not trying to influence the process, but very often they are leaning on us for a little bit of direction, and so we have to learn to not play that facilitator role too religiously. Of No, I can’t influence. So sometimes we need to try to direct them and play different roles. And like you said, like we want to not get enmeshed, but we need to be close enough to the system to be engaged with them.

16:24
Yeah, for sure, one other thing I really loved about this episode is the description of what a unilateral control approach is versus a mutual learning approach. You know, we talk about a learning family, and we talk about that a lot, and that that is such an important quality in families, that do family enterprising well. And, you know, having him describe what unilateral control looks like, and that is, you know, it’s got, I’m tied to one outcome, and that how that doesn’t work in the facilitating a complex system, like a family business,

17:05
yeah, well, you know, there’s topics that are going to emerge, and that person who’s used to having the unilateral control when new things pop up, then that creates a little bit of a surprise, and that’s where we as the facilitator often have to direct things, to allow the things that are emerging to come up, and to sort of tap down on that urge to be unilaterally in control that some people in a family often have, and to allow people to hear each other and talk about the different viewpoints, because So often in these families there, it’s not a democracy, right? And some people hold more sway. And so it’s important for us, as we’re playing those roles in the families, to sort of allow all the voices to be heard and make sure that people are hearing each other

17:57
for sure. And then, you know, we had in Episode 70, how not to ruin your kids with money with Mark Shiller,

18:05
yeah, yeah. I thought that was a really good episode as well.

18:10
He started off by talking. He told the story about how he got started when he was a young lawyer, and he had to go with a senior lawyer to visit some woman who was very old and she was a beneficiary of a trust from her grandfather. And here’s this woman in her, presumably her 80s, and she still was acting like a little girl, and she had been infantilized by the relationship she had with this trust. And it’s just so indicative of how sometimes these relationships with money can can kind of go sideways and stunt people’s growth and not allow them to have what others would consider a normal life.

18:50
Yeah, he talks about the danger zone of that time, and really when the prefrontal cortex is not yet fully developed, and young people you know, have to make decisions with money, and sometimes they if they don’t learn to make those decisions at that point in a way that aligns with values and things, it’s a dangerous time to give people too much resources at certain parts of their development, right?

19:15
Because he’s talking about the fact that, you know, increased financial resources can really reveal character and magnify its potential. And so there is a certain age developmentally that where we’d be wise to advise our client families not to make too big disbursements to the young, impressionable members of the family until they’ve passed through that danger zone.

19:43
Yeah, and, you know, just to put a through line through this we, you know, we were talking about vision for a family. And, you know, I really liked the way he framed that with the analogy of an apple tree. And why does an apple tree, what is the purpose of an apple tree, and that little story, and many you know, and the purpose of the apple tree is to make more apples. And I kind of like that, because it zones out from some of the behavioral things to really again, what’s the intention of the family, and how do we play the long game with family wealth and ensure that we are, you know, supporting human capital, which we know is such an important the growth of human capital is what sustains wealth over generations. And, you know, he talks a little bit about that, and we have to, you know, step back and be really intentional about how we’re using family resources, especially when they are abundant.

20:46
He also talked about how, you know, the hard work that needs to be done needs to be done by the parents. They can’t just hire us advisors to come in and do this, and we can’t care more about the family than the parents. And so, you know, he talked about early on, when, when he would draw up a plan with a family, and then the family, the parents would say, Okay, come and explain it to my kids. And it was like, Well, wait a sec. No, you need to be explaining this to them, because these are your decisions that you made. They need to hear from you why they made these choices, exactly.

21:20
And you know, it’s hard parenting is not. It’s a difficult thing when, especially when there’s new money, because, you know, they may not have a great example from their own being, you know, raised in their own families. And so, you know, it’s not an easy thing, but it definitely we can’t over function for parents, they have to pick up that baton and be intentional about how they you know, they approach these things with their children.

21:53
Well, also, you know, I think the good news, the silver lining, and what he said, was the parents who tried to do this, like just the fact that they’re trying to do it is 90% of what they need to do. So I think often, when we’re working with families, and we encourage them to have regular meetings, that just the fact that they’re having them and that they’re trying to have them, and they’re opening up the space for the conversation is already a large part of the battle is done right there

22:22
for sure, which leads us to Episode 71 so beautifully, because it’s about parenting adult children in family business. Yeah.

22:33
And that was Allison Schaefer, who was also part of symposium, and she had done a keynote, I think, on the last day, and she talked about, you know, the difference between the abundance and scarcity mindsets that sometimes exist in families. And I know that’s something that comes up a lot in the families I work with,

22:57
yeah, for sure, and it’s something, you know, it’s interesting to be able to as advisors, to remember that that sometimes we feel things are not really going down the right path, and just to step back and think is this abundant or scarcity? Thinking can be a really good reset for us. But we also talked a little bit about fair versus equal that, you know, perpetual challenge that we have with families when we are working with them, and they have in deciding how to allocate resources within the family. And I love the analogy she used with food and how, you know, Dad’s, you know, three times bigger than you you know, should we all have the same amount of pork chop on our plate?

23:47
I like the fact she also talked about the dangers of, you know, comparing siblings to each other, and how so often in families, all the offspring are different, and they need to be treated differently. And so as bad as it is to try and, you know, try and make everything equal, trying to point out the differences between them and sort of showing preferences for one to another can really result in problems as they grow up.

24:18
Yeah, and we talked about differentiation and how to manage the competitive nature of siblings, right? Yeah, well,

24:26
there’s a natural competition often, right? And the different the birth order effects that that often the older ones will be more responsible, and then the next one’s coming. Well, I can’t have that role, so I’ll take a different role, and that we see patterns like this in families. I mean, they’re not always 100% but but the differences between siblings, they always exist. And when we come in as advisors from the outside, it’s often we see different things, different from the parents, and it sometimes can be useful to share our perspective with them, to try and change the way they are looking at their own kids.

25:07
Yeah, for sure. And I really love the tip she gave, you know, to celebrate each individual and not compare them to one another. You know, you’re a great athlete and you know, Betty’s, you know, really good at math, and those things are all so important. And if we think again, the through line to family, to own it, and the whole message that we want differentiated kids to add different things to the business, but we also have to help them learn to work together as a team. And I think it’s such an important thing. If I, you know, could weave my magic wand in families that I work with, I would say I would want them all to learn to be a team, a sibling team, and really appreciate each other’s differences. So I think it, you know, it starts when they’re young. But this was particularly about adult children as well. And we did talk about, you know, how to have those discussions with adult children, and I think that that was really useful.

26:14
Well, it was part about over functioning, under functioning. And sometimes, you know the self fulfilling prophecy that happens when the parent tries to over function for the struggling child, and then that struggling child, even when they’re much older, has sort of this learned helplessness built into them because they weren’t allowed to, you know, struggle their way through their own things. And she also talked about how so many of the problems that she sees in families can be solved at the parent level, and that a lot of times that’s where that’s where everything can get fixed more easily, because if the parents have a real huge influence, and sometimes they’re influencing their offspring in ways that they really aren’t intending to

27:01
that’s really true. And also, I think, creating awareness around the intergenerational patterns, because they are, you know, real, but you know, she also says, you know, and I’ve experienced, there’s lots of hope for change when people are aware of you know what’s happened. They and they approach things with maturity and open mindedness. We can affect change in those systems by pointing out the patterns that are occurring and the things that we learn from our parents. And even after the kids are adults, they can reflect on their own upbringing and and and think about how they may want to do things differently. So it’s never too late to kind of reflect on parenting in family and business systems or in any family system.

27:51
And it feels like we’ve come full circle back to the kindness part and the family supporting each other. I think we’ve done a nice we’ve come full circle all the way back to the first episode we talked to about 30 minutes ago. Aileen, I really enjoy these recap episodes. It’s a trip down memory lane, and hopefully give some people some new episodes to go back and listen to if they missed them

28:17
for sure. Thank you, Steve, it’s been a real pleasure. You’re a great co host. I’ve really enjoyed working with you and planning these out, looking forward to all the great episodes we have coming up for 2026 and I just want to remind our listeners that to join us at symposium in Vancouver the 25th to the 27th of May, and the theme for this year’s symposium is on the shoulder of giants. So we are really looking forward to seeing our listeners there. Please try to find us there, and thank you so much for listening. Subscribe to where you get your podcast episodes, and we look forward to our continuity in 2026

29:04
another great year ahead. Thanks.

29:09
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