Let’s Talk Family Enterprise Podcast – Episode 50 | Wealth 3.0

Hello, and welcome to another episode of The let’s talk family enterprise podcast. I’m Steve Legler. I’m excited to be your host once again. This is episode 50. So we’re doing something a bit more special for the occasion. There’s a new book that just came out in the past couple of months called the Wealth 3.0 The future of family wealth advising, and it’s been making quite a splash.

The book has three authors, and all three of them have been guests of mine on previous episodes so they’re no strangers to our audience. Those are episodes 11, 29 and 45. For those taking notes, it’s a pleasure and a privilege to welcome back Jim Grubman Dennis Jaffe and Kristen Keffeler to the show. And if you’re watching this, you’ll note that we’re doing a video version of the podcast for the first time as well. Kristen, Jim, Dennis, thanks to all three of you for joining us today. Welcome back to the Let’s talk family enterprise podcast. Thank you.

1:00
Thanks for having us, Steve.

1:00
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks to you, Steve. It’s an honor to be here for the 50th

1:06
So I want to start with I when I opened the book, which I got about a month ago, I started reading all the testimonials at the front and I started underlining just a few things and I because I want to set the stage for what this book is, and even just a few. This book is a must read for all parties involved in serving families. It’s an insightful assessment. of family wealth advising, and a thought provoking look at the future. Finally, a call to grow our industry and to be more positive and research based. We must appreciate what has already been built and continued to evolve as a real here’s a good one from another previous guests. And insightful and compelling a loose elucidation of where the field of family wealth advising has been and why and more importantly, where it needs to go. So these are just a few of the things that struck me and why I was excited that the book was coming up because I had heard about it for a while that it was coming up. Why this book why now and why the three of you.

Hell of a place to start, this is pretty steep. Maybe I’ll go

2:24
originally, for you years ago, almost exactly four years ago 2019 purposeful planning Institute rendezvous when I gave John A Warnick request to do a look back and look ahead on the field. And it started me thinking in a historical context kind of way about where and where the field, not only is going but may need to go and I think that was the difference. It was not just a summary of an extension of a few small things. I really felt like we were at an inflection point. So with that keynote, and then expanding in the four years since then, and having wonderful colleagues and collaborators and Dennis and Kristen. We decided to essentially to blend our voices and to bring our ideas together to really lay out what you are commenting on is a pretty bold vision of the future. It is

3:36
and I wouldn’t you go guys, I would say that the three of us came together we represent different generations, different genders, different professional experiences, and we felt that that was necessary to cover the scope of what we wanted to do. And I think all of us have grown up with the field and we’re very excited. We think it’s very meaningful. It’s really had a great impact, but it also has kind of unfortunate I would say bad habits that had grown up and and we felt that it was it would be useful to point them out not in a negative way but in a way that says here’s how we can go forward and here’s what what we really want to do and to see in order for the field to grow from being a practice for a number of people kind of but also needing to develop the knowledge of bringing in young people of continuing the field of defining exactly what it is and what it isn’t. And we really felt that there was a a mission involved in terms of development that we all really feel passionate about. Kristen.

4:59
Yeah. So Dennis, you you hit one of the points that I think is, you know, Steve’s question was like, Why us why now? And I think we do. We, the three of us are have a very sort of synergistic way of thinking about client work and approaching our client work and we come at it from three different kinds of facets and and different academic backgrounds. So like there’s a, there’s a sort of a broad skill set that has a lot of synergy, I think between the three of us. And I think that to answer your question why now, there. I think what we are like, ultimately what Jim tuned into in 2019 and met as we step back and look at trends what we didn’t like create what is happening right like there’s this isn’t like we’re we have a vision of creating a new version of of advisors and how they work with clients and it was that this stuff has been these changes had been in the ether and work and happening for the last eight ish years or so Right? Like it’s you can start to see inklings of this and then books and articles and practice models starting in the mid 20 teams at least. And so really what we’ve done is define and name something that’s already at a, you know, a foot in the field and then started to invite a collective vision for how do we go actively pursue this and so why now I think it’s like the industry is already making a shift. And we’ve just named it and given some structure to it.

6:41
So when I was describing what was happening in the field, originally in the keynote, I was looking back on the historical context for where we have come from. But when I started looking ahead to the future, I realized that in some ways, you almost might think we had a story or a narrative for or a picture like from a jigsaw puzzle of what had been built that we all in the field had been kind of living with. But some of those pieces didn’t quite fit. Some of those pieces might have had some drawbacks. And that when I started thinking about where the field needs to go, and what a new picture might begin to look like I realized that there was a real opportunity to describe something that would bring a lot of the threads together that we’re developing. And so in the four years since the original keynote, talked with Dennis and Kristen and as we began to work on the book, we decided to articulate what the new picture might look like and the fact that it actually had a pretty coherent integration of different elements that when you put them all together, it made a remarkable new vision.

8:03
So So you mentioned that you know some of the things maybe we had some bad habits you referred to earlier, and now you took a fresh look at it and you saw some things that maybe maybe were stale and needed to be weeded out. And meantime new things were coming along and needed to be integrated it and is that a fair assessment of what you saw the challenge?

8:24
I would say that they this is a very this is not a field this is a thread of working of helping families. It’s coming from a number of fields and we don’t have experience with what is it like to have a field of fields. We don’t. We kind of see fields as being desperate and you’re getting this you’re getting accounting, you’re getting law, you’re getting estate planning, and what we’re seeing is that that there’s a common core and a way of working together that’s more than the sum of the parts. So and each of us comes from different fields and different experiences. So what we’re trying to do is create a an integration and as we did it, some things didn’t fit and some things didn’t seem right and other things seem to be this is something that we need to remember and build upon. So as we we kind of looked at the hole and looked at, you know, kind of where it was going and how it’s coming together. We saw some opportunities and we wanted to try to take a fresh look and also present a kind of an integrated perspective that really pulls the whatever this new field is together rather than just it’s just not an accumulation of a bunch of actions and practices. And and different perspectives. But really leading somewhere.

9:57
I think Dennis is point is a is an important one to underscores this idea of of integration of the discipline of disciplines and you know the ultra high net worth Institute has is the first organization to really create a model that 10 domains model of family wealth that that captures that integration of that or the comprehensive nature of the discipline of disciplines and in it in a way that and I can say this because I was not involved in its creation the way that Jim and Dennis were, but I think it’s like quite brilliant because you look at this 10 domains of wealth model. And it’s like, well, yeah, of course, right. It’s the simplicity on the far side of complexity that you look at it. It just makes sense, but it’s actually had something that’s quite complex and that we hadn’t seen in in an organized way previously. And one other point I want to make, Steve, you and you had said, you know, there’s some weeding out of some old habits and some creating of what’s new and I think the 10 domains model and and really looking at how do we become a discipline of disciplines as part of what’s new. And I think a really important element for that, that has emerged through this work is how how we have as a field and I will count myself in this in this bucket have historically been relying heavily on on methods of trying to motivate clients that one we’re probably not that are not effective right here based methods like here’s what’s going to happen bad if you don’t hire me and do this work. But so that’s damaging and even more problematic, I think is that we’ve been basing a lot of that fear the fueling that fear in what we have been naming as research and research says But, but the research behind those statistics is has been illustrated to be not well conducted and and or, yeah, just there’s no there there. And so I think that that’s another element that is really important as we think about what are we letting go of as we move from the error that we have been in into what’s next is that the need to let go of that crutch of saying like, well look at families are going to fail because the research says and moving into an era where we start to design research that we can reliably cite, which we don’t have today.

12:42
So I want to touch on you know, you’re talking about the field and defining what the field is. And the subtitle of your book is the future of family wealth, advising and this podcast is put on by family enterprise Canada, for the people who have the family enterprise advisor designation, that’s our main audience. And so the whole field of family enterprise I always thought it was kind of weird because you know, used to talk about family business and we talked about family enterprise to be a more of an all encompassing term. And now family wealth advising seems almost like a subspecialty not all families get to be wealthy families by a family business or a family enterprise, especially these days. There are more and more families that have a lot of wealth, but never had a business. Just think of entertainers and sports celebrities and even people tech billionaires, right? They have some problems. So and then in the book, one of the one of the aha was for me was how so much of what the family wealth advising space is relying on is a lot of the family business stuff. And so can you help walk us through what was there why, why it’s not sufficient anymore and how we need to all evolve through this, especially now when we’re serving families that are really families of wealth more than anything else.

14:11
Well, let me let me kind of say because I was in on the history when when a group of people got together from different disciplines and they got together from law and accounting, and behavioral science and psychology and business. And we all got together and said, there ought to be a field no one is studying family business. And what happened, which is fortunate but also has a downside is that the business schools adopted it. So initially, we had a kind of an idea. There’s family, that’s an that’s a social system, all of itself, and that’s very important, and it raises children and a fundamental building block of society, and there’s business which is another building block, and traditionally they’re separate. And what happened in the field is that the business schools adopted it so family became a modifier of business and it was like family is a type of business which is true, but it leaves out families that are just families that have wealth and so we begin to see it’s not just family business, but families and and Business and Enterprise and and how they work together to different institutions, the family is an institution and businesses and are an institution and, and wealth is a capacity and where we’re saying how do these, how do they work together? So I think we’re taking a broader perspective. That’s more encompassing, and really, every family has wealth. They may have a little bit, medium amount, or they may have a huge amount, but wealth is something that’s a characteristic of all families and what were what we’re doing in this field is saying that when you have a large amount of wealth, more than than you expect, it adds complications and and challenges in terms of your own life and the life of your children and grandchildren. And so that that’s what the field has become. It’s not a business field. It’s it’s really a field of family expression.

16:31
And I think, as you saw in the book, Steve, the idea that family wealth advising is sort of been a poor stepchild from Family Business Advising and nested within it, and whenever people would bring that up. People would say, oh, yeah, well it’s in there with family enterprise, and that covers the wealth and whatever. But it’s had particularly two major impacts. One is there has not been enough research and study and practice devoted just to the issues of family wealth. And the second issue is there are not as many practitioners who really understand and can do consulting and help families around wealth related factors and topics and issues compared to family business activities. You know, for this, for those of us in the field, who actually do specialize in a lot of things regarding family wealth. We get asked about things like how do you do disclosures about wealth and relationships? What are the sibling issues that come up with family wealth, where you may have one sibling who is quite wealthy, but brother and sister are not and the parents are not and you know, the dynamics that come up? When you talk about family issues, often in a family business context. It just gets sucked quickly and almost magnetically over to Oh, yeah. And when you work with your uncle in the business, you know, the complexities of family compensation in the business. Let’s talk about that. For a lot of families, either those topics are not relevant or they have other issues just related to wealth. And those have always been sort of second nature and we really pull the four of those forward and say, there is a field of family wealth advising that needs to be recognized these to stand on its own. And most importantly, it needs education, training, professional organization, and research, which looks at those issues in detail.

18:46
And those little building blocks that we put, we organize the book around but how is a professional field develop with each of those components? Sorry, Kristen.

18:58
Yeah, no, I’m glad you anchored that that point, Dennis. And I think that as as I think about the family enterprise Canada, audience and I think that Jim’s point is a really important one. The point you raise Steve about this, like family business versus family wealth, and I want to just sort of further define the point that that a family can be a business owning family and still need family wealth, consulting Ray like it doesn’t mean that these are now two distinct different things and you have to no longer own an enterprise in order to be in the family wealth category. You need to like liquidated and now we can support and advise and family wealth. It’s like, as Dennis said, There there’s the family system and there’s the enterprise system. And then wealth is is another element in this that that families have enterprise as long as those enterprises are relatively successful. They also have a necessity to be supported in the space of family. Well, how do individual family members find their own identity? How do how are they integrating? How are they building basic personal finance skills and eventually building the 201 and 301 levels of skills to be able to understand trust language and how you know all of the stuff that we know that families need to build that are actually outside the realm of enterprise but family enterprise, only families still made that work?

20:34
So one of the things in the family enterprise advisor program one of the first things we learned is that the family is the client to make it distinct from the business being the client. And we still focus mostly on families that still own a business or have up until recently owned a business. So these fields are very much overlapping and related, and there’s no well now you don’t need this anymore. Now you need that. I mean, one of the analogies I came up with is it’s kind of like dentists and orthodontists, and maybe everyone still needs this, but at some point, you know, well, maybe these people need an orthodontist and maybe other people don’t. So there’s some kind of the and doing something to try and clarify the fields or the differences between them. And I guess trying to advance this particular specialty is one of the areas that you were trying to drive home

21:31
you know, in a way we can distinguish three different things which often get mixed up together. There are activities, there are issues about a field, and then there issues of an industry. You know, in family enterprising, there’s a whole industry of things that are done related to professional firms, multifamily offices, single family offices, the service delivery side, that’s the industry of consulting to wealthy families. There are the activities that are done how to hold a family meeting, how to understand this so that financial education are the sorts of things and what has been missing is the sort of coalescing and organizing the activities related to wealth that are not just industry activities, but the activities of a field of organized, professional field with a knowledge base, a skills base, a set of competencies, credentialing, and that we saw the need to pull all those threads together and to say there actually is enough here to create a field of family wealth advising, and how would that what would that look like? How would we do that? What would be some of the important aspects of its development? What would it look like in practice here? We get back to and practice that loses some of the flaws that family wealth advising had built very well to point out and so it was time to really fill in that middle area between the industry and various activities and to actually create a field that had a clear identity.

23:28
And it’s a strange field, I think, because it’s a field where the ticket to entry is to have a field of origin. So you come in, you’re trained as a psychologist, as a coach, as a management consultant, as a financial planner, as a banker, and you have a professional field, isn’t it as a lawyer, and then you come in and you’re saying, but I’m dealing with the broader issues of the family which intersect a number of different competencies. So there’s a field of origin, but then there’s a field of practice. For example, family meetings is at the center of all of all the work that all of the different advisors do. And yet where do you go to learn about the best practices and the technology of doing a good family meeting? It’s kind of like, well, if you’re a good lawyer, you know how to do a family meeting or you learn how to do it and it doesn’t happen by osmosis. So what we’re trying to do is define the generic skills that make up this emerging field that come out of all of the different individual fields of origin and yet, they converge on a set of skills and a set of practices that have to do with helping a family not just manage the increase of wealth, but the implications of wealth and the different elements of wealth and the different consequences and activities that having wealth has for a extended family unit.

25:10
I think that’s a great example what you just said, Dennis, the difference between an activity and a competency, a competency as part of a field, family meetings and in the FAA certification, you guys talk about, you know, family meetings go over some of the basics, talk about it, but a conference that we were just all at last week, I heard you speak Steve, around the idea of you know, getting that call from a guy on the way to a family meeting, say so like, what am I supposed to do? Like how do I do this? So the there’s the activity that we advocate that’s important of family communication and family meetings. But what we’re focusing on is how do you build a competency to do a family meeting and to handle the complexity with a range of clients from easy to more difficult, and then the knowledge base and skills base for doing family meetings is actually part of being a member of a field and understanding family dynamics. Governance, you know, education, trusts and beneficiary education, that you really need to understand multiple domains to be competent at the activity of running a family meeting, and that’s a core part of doing family, wealth, advising

26:40
and as someone who’s spoken with a lot of people who have the FDA designation, and knows that not everyone wants to run family meetings, and not everyone can and not everyone does it well, but we all hear stories about those people who think Well, I got my FDA so now I can go and do this. And you know, some of them can but it’s not exactly as easy as it often looks. And so, if this wealth 3.0 can help provide a direction and some more training and more credentialing of what do I have to do to be a full member of the steel that does these activities, then, I mean, I’m all for it. And I think most of the people that listen to these podcasts and will be watching this one will agree that this is it’s part of the step forward. And that’s one of the things I loved about the book is that the whole last part, sort of paints a picture of where we could go where we should go. And so I’m wondering how, how much fun that was or how challenging that was for the three of you to sort of envision that and then put it together in a coherent fashion. A

27:54
lot of conversations about that.

27:59
Yeah, I think that I mean, this is one of the place one of the many places that I feel super lucky to be in the brain. Soup with him and Dennis is, um, you know, as I think about how a lot of that thinking emerged and kind of how we each had contributions to the like, vision of the future and how, like, having ideas like how do we do this, and how do we strike the balance between if painting a vision of what’s possible and the questions that we need to be asking, and not being prescriptive, to say, and we know exactly how it should go, because that would that we, I don’t think we think we know exactly how it should go. I think it’s really the book and one of my favorite sections in the latter part of the book is the the section with all the questions about like, questioning the assumptions that we have and how like what would research look like if we were asking different questions and I think that so I guess I don’t know exactly how to answer your question other than like the been in the the brain soup of it is like a pretty magical if not, at times, messy experiences as we continue to try to like collectively figure out how to create something that might actually be a useful roadmap, knowing that there’s complications for for many fields, like, you know, there’s some sort of real limits that lawyers and people practicing as psychologists, not just people with a psychology background, but practicing as psychologists, but the how some of the limits they have just because of the ethical standards of their professions.

29:51
In a way you might imagine. What we talked about in the book is sort of like architects drawings, or map roadmap of what could be built. But you know, when you actually come down to building something, you discover Well, this needs to be adjusted over here, or we actually need a piece over here. We did anticipate and whatever. And so we are proposing this vision of the future of family wealth, advising with the likely areas and components that will be needed, the questions to be answered. Maybe the possibility of what some of those answers might look like, but what we really intended the Munk debate was an impetus to begin to bring the threads together, and in a way, bring the field together to begin building some of these things and we’re just so energized by the response. That we’ve gotten the people who want to say, I’d like to be part of that, you know, we’ve had people step up, who say actually, we thought about doing research in that area. We might want to sort of we might want a piece of that aspect. We’ve had organizations behind the scenes where we’re starting to talk about curriculum, credentialing, collaborations between organizations that have not collaborated before. It’s become a real rallying cry and rallying point to to coalesce a lot of things that again, were already in progress or people were thinking about, but they needed the roadmap.

31:35
So I want to you’re mentioning what I was going to get to was about kind of like the call to action part of the book. And it sounds like people have heard that call to action. And that action is already starting and I can’t help but note, the meta version of this of like we work with families and we can’t walk in there with the answer. We have to help them figure out their answer. And then find a way you’re sort of just trying to lead because any answer that sustainable for this field for this industry for all of us, really depends on everyone’s buy in and everyone co creating.

32:17
Absolutely agree with that, Steve and I think that one of the you know one of the things that is an important shift in this is what you just named like we we can all have built skill and built expertise to bring to our work with clients and hopefully we do have unique things, insight that we can bring to help guide them. And part of the you know, there’s there’s a number of advanced practice skills that we’re advocating for that are a part of a core curriculum, that every home domain would have some skill at being able to lead coaching type question for coaching type conversations where it’s not just about us from our role as expert advisor, but our ability to humbly be in the conversation trusting that the client and the client family has core knowledge and wisdom that the more we can shine a light on and help them recognize their own capacity, that that they will be able to engage in this work from a place of purpose and from a place of increasing confidence. And then we can bring our build skill and expertise to help guide that but it really does create shift the playing field of the client advisor relationship and from my lived experience, it’s so much more fun and enjoyable in the lift as an advisor is less because the client is owning more and it requires it requires some trust to let go of the you know the shield of expertise to actually be in a conversation that allows the client to step up with their own wisdom and capacity. And in order to do that we have to be skilled at inviting them there.

34:13
And I think one of the key themes that goes all through the book is the fact that clients are coming to us with some anxiety, not just about what to do, but about what concerns with their family, their children. Future of well the future of their business. And when you’re anxious, you want someone to do something about it. You want to take action immediately. And what we’re trying to teach is that advisors can be a little bit a little bit different in how they handle anxiety by saying yes, you are anxious, but you don’t have to rush into something you don’t have to be controlling. You don’t have to, you know, kind of make the future based on your fears. You can step back and create a future based on what you’re doing well and what’s positive and what you want to create. That’s a little bit more than just fixing and making your family more comfortable in the short term. And so I think as you know, kind of dealing with anxiety and not just rushing to solve the problem and to do something but really to help families step back a little bit and and look to learn more about what’s possible and consider more and listen more and everything more.

35:36
Oh yes, and boy this Yes and there are lots of people, lots of people who have been making a really good living selling these fearful web 2.0 solutions, and they won’t easily stop doing that. And part of what I’ve been saying people when I talk about where the industry is going and how it’s turning very slowly, is that we need some of these older people who have who have been wielding their hammer, every one is male. We need some of them to sort of age out and then the newer younger people coming in who see things more as as democratic as a family as as we rather than me. And what’s possible as as opposed to what’s what’s gonna go wrong. And I think we’re well into that. And we still have a long way to go.

36:32
But let me correct one thing that you just said that I’m concerned about. That we talked about wealth 2.0 as as a positive force and waking us up to the further meaning of wealth. So the problems the anxiety and the fear based solution didn’t come out of wealth 2.0 They came out of the way that people apply that or misapplied it. And and that’s one of the problems as well is to point out has a wonderful perspective on looking at wealth more broadly looking at for non financial wealth, looking at families working together, but practitioners began to kind of emphasize the negative parts of it, don’t want to lose, you’re gonna lose your money. You don’t want to spoil your kids. You don’t want to, you know, create, you know, kind of have your family collapse and the anxiety overwhelm the positive message. And the positive message comes from to point out, but it was overwhelmed. And so we see three point out as, as a new way to get beyond the negativity and fear based approaches.

37:45
I think a great example of that has to do with the legal domain and the issue of trusts. In 2.0, a lot of things came up and got built that were aspirational. I mean, you know, look back on John A’s, talking about purposeful trusts, the importance of trustee beneficiary, relationships, educating the beneficiary, a lot of things actually that were part of wealth 2.0 that were wonderful, and that we still use. It was the how you actually execute in operation, and that both from the practitioner side, but again, as that is said from the anxious client side, when somebody would say, I don’t think that’s such a great idea. I don’t want to tell my kids that they have a trust coming because it’ll demotivate them. Let’s figure out a way to create the trust. Don’t tell them about it. And, you know, let them grow up, quote unquote, middle class, and that’s the way that they’ll be fine. And then when they find out there’s money later, they’ll just be happy. And we

38:56
already know that they have money. And you’re you’re denying the reality that they know there’s a lot of money there and they know that you’re avoiding talking about it and so they are respectful to you by avoiding it as well. So you’re both going, working blindly, not really in touch with each other.

39:17
And then sometimes they cross purposes. And then the as you say, you know, the advisor or the attorney or somebody say, oh, I can build that for you. Let’s draft the trust, and you’re the client. So I will do what you say and you know and so things happen. Sometimes well and sometimes not. What we are talking about in Well, 3.0 is different conversations between attorneys and clients where attorneys might try and demonstrate a recognition of the concerns, the risks that PMG ones may feel in developing trusts, but instead of validated and say, Well, yes, you know, have I told you about your safety shirtsleeves to say, well, you know, I can understand your concern, but there are ways to not only draft the trust and to make sure it’ll be okay. But what we’re finding is letting people know preparing your children and grandchildren to be good beneficiaries actually will make it work out better than if you hide the money from them. Can’t talk about that. And so teaching the competencies for those sorts of conversations, and shifting what happens around the central issue of trust. That’s a great example of a 3.0 approach versus a 2.0 approach.

40:45
And I’ll add a layer on to that and give another sort of just specific example which I think, you know, as we think about like how do we help support and help families build competencies to be able to have these conversations receive that receive information be in that that conversation together? We’re also talking about the broadening of the lens around what education is important, right? So if you think about family members and what they need surprising Gen spouses, you know, family members in the ecosystem, what do they need to be successful in navigating the integration of wealth into their lives? Certainly they need personal financial skills and more advanced financial skills. But historically, we’ve sort of ended the the education conversation there like at night you know, how often do I

41:41
need to do that too? Right.

41:44
And it’s just like very often families will say like, well, when did we start the financial education because that’s going to be the key than being successful with this right? And, and really like the lens needs to be broader because it financial skills are important. But they’re, and the ability to like, pursue one’s own self identity and understand their relationship with money and with wealth and how money and wealth impact their relationships with people. Like there’s there’s a much broader scope of education that’s necessary to have people effectively integrate this into their lives. And I think that’s, that’s a 3.0 addition as well as really opening up that aperture.

42:26
That idea of well, we need to get them to be fine, financially literate, and then that ticks that box and everything will be fine. I hope we can flush that one and move on to that there’s a lot more at stake for families. And you’re bringing up for me the idea that you know, I mentioned that in our MBA program. We talked about the family as the client but the family is not a unitary thing. The family is composed of a number of individuals. And so what I think well 3.0 goes to also is to identify that all of those individuals that are part of the family need to be part of that. They’re not just stakeholders there, they’re really they need to be considered as individuals and that individual flourishing if a family has a lot of financial wealth. It gives them an opportunity to have positive impact on more people in the family. But most families don’t necessarily look at it that way. So Sophie, is this going to help advisors to do more of that,

43:30
while you say you say, the family has to work together? That’s not a thing that you declare that that’s a skill that family members have to learn and just like trusting each other, it’s not a feeling. It’s something that you develop and so families need to develop trust. They need to develop skills for working together need to develop skills for conflict resolution and for dealing with differences in a family is a is a community that needs to operate and govern itself with the skills and that’s what this field has to be teaching not just how to read a spreadsheet and how to, you know, kind of, you know, look at the financial statement, but but much more, much more interpersonal skills.

44:17
And, Steve, in your role and the FDA, this I think is kind of where the rubber meets the road. Because I can easily imagine advisors, attorneys, others listening on this podcast, who would say yes, but suppose my client doesn’t want to do that. And you know, usually it’s he is my client, so we’re dead in the water at that point. What am I going to do? Try and talk him out of it. He’s going to say, well tell you what, let me go find an advisor who will do what I want, and then you lose business. So I think in the book as you will know, one of the major chapters is on practice. And we give a lot of examples, so almost like our client scenario and a roleplay of how a conversation may need to go. And we really explicitly wanted to make that a key part of the book around the house. How do you draw out from a client not by disputing with them arguing with them, trying to tell them what they need to do, but through these things like the week all the positive discovery process and some of the other techniques that actually show empathy, to the concerns that the client has that’s driving their desire, no, I don’t want to tell him about it. And to draw out and work with those things in a different way, using some new skills, that allows the person to feel understood, but also allows the conversation to move toward can we broaden this to include your wife, your kids, you know, more people, other branches. Advisors, you’re going to need the how, on what sometimes is a difficult conversation.

46:18
That can be very difficult conversations. And what I often say is that families left to themselves won’t often get started on those important conversations and I think that’s where all of us from whatever field, we you know, we need to figure out ways where we can help them do that better. In whatever way Yeah, absolutely.

46:42
I think that you know, again, going back to, to not only like the the idea of advanced practice skills that are ways that advisors can interact with clients more effectively. I think also for advisors to be in these conversations and be agile at it sort of flipping the conversation that this fits into the the area I think of advanced practice skills, but it’s really like what are the skills, the communication skills, the very effective communication skills that that advisors can build, to be able to hear to validate what they’re hearing from a client and still invite them into something new. So, you know, a simple way to do that is to be able to say, I hear that you are really nervous about starting this communication or starting to thinking about sharing information. With your family, though those fears are those fears are valid, like it is accurate, that you are feeling that way. Tangible. Yeah. It doesn’t mean that that that has to be the outcome. Are you open to hearing some ideas for how we might do this? In a way that could you know, help move the conversation forward without triggering that fear for you or something? Yeah, there’s a way to just get skilled as advisors are really enhancing our communication skills so that we can continue to to be effective in in transitioning that conversation, not just taking the clients what they present at face value and saying, Well, I need to attend to that because they said that they’re scared. So let’s figure out how to make them not scared by putting a process or a trust or whatever in place.

48:35
A lot of this goes to being a lot more flexible and a lot more curious and not just reacting. The client says oh, I need this and you say, Oh, I know I had another client who had that and this is what I provided. So I’ll provide the same solution. It requires a lot more reflection and a lot more understanding the complexities of the system. And I like to think that the people in Canada or mostly in Canada have gone through the FDA program already have some of this and so I would think that most of the people who who are the main target of this podcast will already be sort of you’re preaching to that choir. And I love the fact that you’re talking about advanced skills, because I know that the organization is always trying to figure out what other kinds of things we can be teaching, because a lot of people come out of the MBA program and they say, that was great. I want more what have you what else have you got for me? So if this can help drive some more of that and advancing the whole field. I think that’s wonderful. This has been fascinating and unfortunately we need to get to wrapping this up. We always end with a couple of final requests. But since you’ve all been on before, I want to turn it turn them a little bit sideways. And normally, we’ve asked for a book recommendation, but I thought, let’s ask now for a book author or someone that our audience members might want to follow because there’s more than just books in the world. There’s, there’s other podcasts, there’s people on other social media channels, who could you point to us that we could start to follow and read their books or sign up for their newsletters, people that that will that’ll help us move down towards the wealth 3.0 mindset.

50:29
I’ll go somebody that we cite in the book, who whose writing and whose perspective generally including an activity that I mentioned, that we all respect is Daniel Kahneman. And not too long ago, I was reading his more recent book noise. Ways in which variability comes in to play with different judgments of things. It’s a follow on to Thinking Fast and Slow, but anytime you read Daniel Kahneman, it makes you humble. It makes us realize that we have to be careful of what we believe what we think we know how we’re viewing things, and it’s a great check against getting too firmly into the narrative or the story that you have. And in particular, there are some recent things where he has had interactions with somebody another researcher in the field, who has almost like an opposite view on the research or about a particular thing. And in a wonderful demonstration. They have done what Daniel Kahneman and others called adversarial collaboration, where you get these people together who seemingly have opposite views, and out of that gets forged a common understanding that moves everything forward. So I would really encourage people to take a look at that.

51:58
Thanks, Tim. I love that. Kristin.

52:02
Well, I I’m gonna go sort of in a similar genre of thinker. I really think that Angela Duckworth and who obviously is well known for her research on grit. Her original research is really around character building, and she’s got a blog called I get called character lab and I think her I think the blog is also named character lab, but that her lab at Penn is called character lab. And if you look up character lab, and sign up for her weekly tips, she she herself writes and then also has other researchers in the field. Write weekly tips to parents and educators about how to develop key ways to develop character in, in use in emerging adults. And they’re just always fast. They’re easy to understand. They’re, they’re based on research, and I think it’s a great way to tap into a broad network of social scientists who are all thinking about the development of character strengths and character traits.

53:10
Awesome, Dennis,

53:11
I would I would jump in and give it to ages of the lifespan because we’re the one other thing we’re very interested in is how different stages of life and particularly the longer lives that we leave now in the families affected. And on the younger side, Madeline Levine has written some books about young adults and the challenges that they face with wealth and she wrote that the price of privilege which is a wonderful, but and then at the older adage, there’s beginning to be some interesting commentary, but I would suggest the book by Arthur Brooks, about elders is a is a perspective on what is it that you get when you get older other than deteriorate? What is that an elder develops? The kind of thinking that that is really a useful and positive and has to do with maturity on the kind of the younger and older

54:16
strength to strength with

54:19
reading it right now. So we’ll put links to all of these resources and this question landed even better than I was hoping it would. So thank you to all of you. So now we’ll segue into that normally, the last thing we asked for is one piece of advice advisor to advisor and I want to just make it a little more specific and talk about wealth. 3.0 What’s one step or one idea to give our listeners, what can we do to begin adopting more of a wealth 3.0 mindset and practice Kristin can you go first?

54:54
Yeah, um, so one, I think one very tangible practice that is an art skill that an advisor can integrate today. You know, we’re I think in general, we are all quite skilled and aware of the power of painting a purpose and a vision for the future, right? Like what is thriving look like for your family 10 years from now, and, and one of the 3.0 advanced practice skills I think can be very effective for advisors to adopt is to do that visioning work and then to ask the client whoever sitting in the room and what are you what capacities what what strength do you have today, that you that you can already see this at play? Like what can you already use today that that you know, will help you get there like what capacity do you have, rather than always holding it out there in the future is something we’re building towards like, and you’re probably already doing things today to help you get there. Let’s name them. So that’s one that’s my well 3.0 skill exploit. Thank

56:01
you. Yeah, let them know that they’re already on their way and it’s not as far away as they thought. Dennis,

56:08
I would say that an advisor needs to look at his or her assumptions. The things that they think are are foundations of their work and say is this really useful? Is this really something that I can be confident in? Do I need to look at this in a different way? And in the book, we present all kinds of examples of that, but I think that I keep finding that when I ask a question to a family or I focus on something or I set up an agenda for a meeting. There are assumptions that lie behind it, and I find that I think advisors need to be looking at their assumptions, because they may find out that they need to think differently and in some ways about some of the things that they just do automatically, because they’ve been doing them

56:59
for decades. And it’s let’s sort of question our assumptions and then be more a little more flexible, Jim.

57:11
I think in facing anything new in any new paradigm, any new skill that we’re not sure of any new idea? It’s very easy to jump to, well, that would be hard or there’s challenges for that. I’m not sure how to implement that my system, whatever. And I have found that changing that in one simple but powerful way really helps. Which is instead of saying, well, what’s the challenge of that or there’s a problem with that? To be curious and saying, what would it take? What would it take to know how to say that? What would it take to be able to have a different conversation with a client. And when you just remind yourself, you may not know what it’s going to take, but maybe somebody else does or maybe you can figure this out that it creates possibility. And I think if we all move toward that together, that we’re going to build a great field.

58:23
Awesome. This This has been wonderful and and I thank you all. Kristin Dennis Jim, thank you for being our guest. Once again. This has been great like can’t wait for this to be out there and part of part of the episodes that are out there for our listeners. Thank you. Well,

58:41
thank you very much, Steve for inviting us and for being a leader in Canada. On this. We want to have this spread as much as possible and you’re certainly very important person with that.

58:56
And for being a being a leader and really helping us different times formulate our own thinking Thank you. Yes.

59:06
Episode. Yes,

59:07
and here’s the 50 more listeners. If you haven’t already subscribed, please do so to make sure you never miss any of these monthly episodes. And thanks again for joining us. I’m Steve Legler. Until next time,