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The Long and the Short of It

Most people spend so much time looking at the short term, they end up ignoring the long term. I usually have the opposite problem.

That is often a good thing, though, if only because focussing on the future usually helps guide your shorter term decisions. Let’s look at some examples of this issue.

I am relatively new to the field of family business consulting, and anxious to learn as much as I can from those who have been at it for years. I recently came across the Purposeful Planning Institute, which is a group of like-minded people who help others with their planning (in a purposeful way!).

For the past couple of months I have been listening in on their weekly calls and I have realized that the majority of the speakers seem to be far ahead of where I am, which is not that surprising. But not only that, they also seem to be looking so much further into the future on behalf of their clients.

Maybe I notice this because my typical preferred client is just starting to look more at their family, rather than simply their business. I identify most easily with my own family and that of my in-laws, both of which were lead by founders who focussed a great deal on their businesses, possibly at the expense of their families, despite the best of intentions.

Looking at the long term has many advantages, but can you look too far ahead? Maybe yes, but I find that it is better to look ahead too often, and too far, than the reverse. So many people are so busy putting out day-to-day fires in their business, making the long-term view suffer.

A great example of the long versus short question came from an unexpected source recently. I was considering having laser eye surgery to correct a problem with my vision. I wear glasses for driving and going to sports events, as they help me see clearly at longer distances. I don’t need glasses for reading, although my arms seem to be getting a bit too short when dealing with very fine print.

The woman who tested my eyes suggested I delay any surgery for a few years. I was not too surprised, because my eyesight is generally better than most people’s my age, and I have been told in the past that I was not an ideal candidate for laser surgery.

But then she really explained it to me in a way that I could understand, which I really appreciated, because I pride myself in being able to clarify confusing things for others.

She told me that everyone has a certain range of vision over which they have the ability to focus clearly without glasses or contacts. For some it is on the far end, for others, it is up close. Here is where it got really interesting. If you have surgery to alter the range, in my case to improve my distance viewing, then you will also affect the other end, adversely.

The surgery just moves the range in one direction or the other, it doesn’t make the range any longer. You cannot extend the range, you can just move it closer or farther.

Getting back to my family business analogy, let me attempt to put it in the proverbial nutshell.

If you want to start looking at the long term, you actually MUST stop spending time on the short term. You CANNOT do it all.

You have to make a conscious shift in you thinking. And that is the long and the short of it.

 

Steve Legler “gets” business families.
 
He understands the issues that families face, as well as how each family member sees things from their own viewpoint.
 
He specializes in helping business families navigate the difficult areas where the family and the business overlap, by listening to each person’s concerns and ideas.  He then helps the family work together to bridge gaps by building common goals, based on their shared values and vision.
 
His background in family business, his experience running his own family office, along with his education and training in coaching, facilitation, and mediation, make him uniquely suited to the role of advising business families and families of wealth.
 
He is the author of Shift your Family Business (2014), he received his MBA from the Richard  Ivey School of Business (UWO, 1991), is a CFA Charterholder (CFA Institute, 2002), a Family Enterprise Advisor (IFEA 2014), and has received the ACFBA and CFWA accreditations (Family Firm Institute 2014-2015).
 
He prides himself on his ability to help families create the harmony they need to support the legacy they want. To learn how, start by signing up for his monthly newsletter and weekly blogs here.
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How May I Sell You Today? #FAIL (2 of 2)

Last week we looked at selling versus helping, from Zig Ziglar’s viewpoint that you should just stop selling and start helping, to getting paid to help in a field where clients are not accustomed to paying for it.

In addition to all that stuff, something that has thrown me for a bit of a loop recently was a twitter post from a business coach.

I have been following Leanne Hoagland-Smith (a.k.a. Coach Lee) for several months and she posts lots of great stuff. But then a couple of weeks ago, I was surprised that she was telling people to stop pushing the fact that they wanted to help.

She was encouraging people to stop saying that they were there to help, since so many clients, when they hear the word “help”, now actually mentally substitute the word “sell”.

What? Was Zig wrong? Or is his messge now out of date?

So I started thinking about it, and I realize that maybe the word “help” does get overused, and maybe it isn’t much “softer on the ears”. Maybe Coach Lee is right. But then where does that leave us?

Maybe we should no longer emphasize that we want to help, maybe we need to say that we want to “work with” people to achieve certain results.

After all, much of what we offer in business family consulting isn’t content (a product) but much more assistance with process issues, the “how” more than the “what”. We don’t really want to do things FOR clients as much as work through things WITH them, to the point where they can do these things on their own, without our “help”.

So perhaps the real answer is that while we should still start helping (à la Zig) we shouldn’t SAY that we want to help (à la Coach Lee). The key might be to show some help, do some helping, just help, but not use the word, talk about it, or ever say out loud that we are helping.

In the process of receiving our help, clients will soon feel like we have become “indespensible”, to the point where we don’t have to sell them anything, because they will be so ready to buy from us.

Maybe what Zig was really getting at was that we should just start to make things easier for people. This reminds me of the word “facilitator”, as in “facile”, which is the closest translation into French that I can think of for the word “easy”.

But if I am actually making things easier, am I not helping? Well yes, but saying you want to help may be about as poorly received as saying that you want to facilitate. Very few people wake up in the morning and decide that they are going to find themselves a facilitator, even if that may be just what they need.
When speaking to classmates and colleagues in this area, I often make the distinction that while there is a great deal of need for our services, there is not necessarily a lot of demand.

Many potential clients do not know that they could use our services. A large part of the reason stems from the fact that they do not know who we are, what we do, and how we can help, without them feeling like we sold them anything.

As we mature as an industry, we need to do a better job of explaining how much of a diffference we can make with family businesses, and more importantly, with business families.

Steve Legler “gets” business families.
 
He understands the issues that families face, as well as how each family member sees things from their own viewpoint.
 
He specializes in helping business families navigate the difficult areas where the family and the business overlap, by listening to each person’s concerns and ideas.  He then helps the family work together to bridge gaps by building common goals, based on their shared values and vision.
 
His background in family business, his experience running his own family office, along with his education and training in coaching, facilitation, and mediation, make him uniquely suited to the role of advising business families and families of wealth.
 
He is the author of Shift your Family Business (2014), he received his MBA from the Richard  Ivey School of Business (UWO, 1991), is a CFA Charterholder (CFA Institute, 2002), a Family Enterprise Advisor (IFEA 2014), and has received the ACFBA and CFWA accreditations (Family Firm Institute 2014-2015).
 
He prides himself on his ability to help families create the harmony they need to support the legacy they want. To learn how, start by signing up for his monthly newsletter and weekly blogs here.
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Say Goodbye to Succession Planning

So many advisors spend so much time talking to their family business clients about the importance of succession planning. Many of us are guilty of over-using the term to the point of rendering it nearly meaningless.

I hereby implore everyone to just STOP. I am not saying that we should not talk about how to get the business, the family, and the ownership from where they are today, to where they will need to be some time in the future, because those are are still very relevant and important. But can we please stop using the term “succession planning”?

My feeling is that when clients hear anyone talk about the importance of succession planning, what goes on in their minds is some sort of replay of their mother telling them to eat their vegetables. Yes, Mom, I know I should eat my vegetables, thanks for the reminder. But I’m an adult now with kids of my own, so please back off. There is only so much you can take.

Then there are the advisors who use the term succession planning in their own way, turning it into something that they will help their clients get through painlessly, with very clear benefits. Just put together this little tax-minimizing strategy now, and then you can go on doing what you were doing before, knowing that your succession plan has been taken care of.

These advisors have hijacked the fact that clients realize that they must do something that can be called succession planning so that they can check that box off and tell everyone, “don’t bother me with that, I already did it”, as if “it” is a one-shot deal.

But it feels good to do that, because not only have your advisors shown you exactly how much you will save in taxes with their plan (down to the penny!) but you can get on with your life knowing that you have taken care of this important issue. This is like your Aunt Bea, who shows you how to drown your broccoli in a thick cheese sauce so that eating your vegetables is somehow palatable, despite the fact that the overall benefit is questionable at best.
I think that the main reason people hesitate to open themselves to discussing succession is that it focuses on change, and it is the kind of change that has them moving from a good position now, to a worse position later. Most people will try to delay dealing with questions about when THEY will retire, and when THEY will die. And if Grandpa hated to talk about it, and Dad hated to talk about it, why should I enjoy talking about it?

So if I am suggesting that you say goodbye to talking about succession planning, what I am I offering instead? Welcome to the world of Continuity Planning. Now I understand that you may be sceptical about the benefits of changing one single word, but let’s look at some of the ways that continuity is a better label.

Rather than focussing on change, like succession does, continuity focusses instead on what remains the same. I want my business to continue, I want my family to continue, and I need to figure out the best way for the ownership to allow the other two to continue.

In essence, the continuity plan is the long-range plan, the overarching plan, the big picture plan. Within the continuity plan, there are indeed a number of succession issues that need to be dealt with,

But when we start by stepping back, and concentrate on all of the things that we want to have continue, long after we are out of the picture, the succession issues become a lot smaller in that context.

When people can better grasp WHY they are doing something, as part of a larger whole, better results are almost assured.

Steve Legler “gets” business families.
 
He understands the issues that families face, as well as how each family member sees things from their own viewpoint.
 
He specializes in helping business families navigate the difficult areas where the family and the business overlap, by listening to each person’s concerns and ideas.  He then helps the family work together to bridge gaps by building common goals, based on their shared values and vision.
 
His background in family business, his experience running his own family office, along with his education and training in coaching, facilitation, and mediation, make him uniquely suited to the role of advising business families and families of wealth.
 
He is the author of Shift your Family Business (2014), he received his MBA from the Richard  Ivey School of Business (UWO, 1991), is a CFA Charterholder (CFA Institute, 2002), a Family Enterprise Advisor (IFEA 2014), and has received the ACFBA and CFWA accreditations (Family Firm Institute 2014-2015).
 
He prides himself on his ability to help families create the harmony they need to support the legacy they want. To learn how, start by signing up for his monthly newsletter and weekly blogs here.
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Take My Advice: Don’t Take My Advice

I recently read the following quote from an article by Vinod Khosla, tweeted by Vala Afshar: “For entrepreneurs, the toughest thing is knowing whose advice to take and whose not to”. Agreed.

In the family business realm, the head of the company may not consider themselves an entrepreneur anymore, but the question of whose advice to follow is just as difficult.

On my website [fbo7624.com], I recently added a section called “Articles”, where I have begun to post links to some of the more interesting things that I come across. I added a link to the audio of an interview with Tom Deans, author of the best-seller Every Family’s Business, discussing his new book, Willing Wisdom.

Deans mentioned something that I found interesting about the differences between Canadians and our American counterparts, when it comes to whom they consider their “Most Trusted Advisor”.

For Americans, it is most often their lawyer, yet for Canadians it is their accountant. When you think about it, it is not that surprising, what with the relative number of lawyers in each country.

Because family businesses are more complex than others, the advice required often emanates from areas of overlap between “family” matters and “business” matters. Many advisors, both accountants and lawyers, feel more comfortable when they concentrate on their area of specialty, and it isn’t usually the family part.

So what do you do when your lawyer tells you one thing, and your accountant tells you something else? Thankfully, there is a growing field of multi-disciplinary advisors, coming through various programs, like IFEA in Canada, and FFI in the USA.
It is not difficult to understand that when the advisors understand each other and their respective roles, AND they learn how to work together to help their clients, better solutions are almost always developed, compared to each working individually.

But it is not always easy, because there are so many variables in a family business. I believe that most professional advisors are well-meaning and honestly want to provide quality advice to all their clients. I do not, however, believe that they are all successful in achieving that goal.

Too often things are done in a hurry, before everyone has taken the time to understand the situation and ensure that a coherent plan is developed. This could be because the client has serious “fee aversion” and expects to get quality work done at a low price. Or it could be the busy professional making assumptions about the client’s situation and proposing a “cookie-cutter” solution that had worked for others before.

So what is my advice? I wish you wouldn’t ask me that, because I don’t like to think of myself as an “advisor”. In the end, the client must make up his own mind about what advice to follow. You shouldn’t decide until you are confident that you understand your options, having examined the pros and cons of all your alternatives.

Sometimes people need help understanding all the options and all the advice their have received. What I believe they could use at times like those, is not another “advisor”, but more of a “confidant”.

Multi-disciplinary advisors are well positioned to take on the “most trusted advisor” role, because they have the ability to relate to and understand the other key professionals too. If the advisors can’t properly explain their advice in laymen’s terms, they may not be the right ones to use.

Like so many other things, it is not really the advice you get, but what you do with it, that counts. I prefer to offer my help in understanding all the advice, rather than offering more advice, because that would just make things more confusing.

Steve Legler “gets” business families.
 
He understands the issues that families face, as well as how each family member sees things from their own viewpoint.
 
He specializes in helping business families navigate the difficult areas where the family and the business overlap, by listening to each person’s concerns and ideas.  He then helps the family work together to bridge gaps by building common goals, based on their shared values and vision.
 
His background in family business, his experience running his own family office, along with his education and training in coaching, facilitation, and mediation, make him uniquely suited to the role of advising business families and families of wealth.
 
He is the author of Shift your Family Business (2014), he received his MBA from the Richard  Ivey School of Business (UWO, 1991), is a CFA Charterholder (CFA Institute, 2002), a Family Enterprise Advisor (IFEA 2014), and has received the ACFBA and CFWA accreditations (Family Firm Institute 2014-2015).
 
He prides himself on his ability to help families create the harmony they need to support the legacy they want. To learn how, start by signing up for his monthly newsletter and weekly blogs here.
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Le concierge est un faux ami

Ceux qui sont assez à l’aise en anglais et en français ont sûrement remarqué qu’il existe un certain nombre de traductions qui sont en effet moins évidentes qu’elles semblent à première vue. L’exemple que je cite souvent est “librairie” qui est un magasin qui vend des livres, et “library” où ils prêtent des livres, donc une bibliothèque.

Dans mes jours à McGill, j’avais pris un cours de traduction, et le prof surnommait ces instances des “faux amis”, et j’ai gardé sa terminologie et je le répète souvent, même s’il fait déjà bien des années que j’ai oublié le nom du prof.

Quand j’étais au secondaire dans une école anglophone, on m’a placé dans les cours de français avancé puisque j’avais complété mon primaire en français. Rendu en secondaire 4, ceci me donnait aussi le droit de prendre d’autres cours en français comme options. De loin, le plus mémorable de ceux-ci était le cours de comptabilité donné par Monsieur McGee.

M. McGee était un anglophone avec un sérieux accent quand il parlait français, mais il s’exprimait quand même très bien et l’effort était toujours là aussi de sa part. Il s’amusait à nous souligner plusieurs faux amis aussi, même s’il ne les appellait pas par ce nom.

Loyer, ce n’est past votre “lawyer” (avocat), c’est le rent, il nous disait. Les fournitures, quand à eux, étaient des “supplies” et non pas des meubles.

Je préfère trouver des exemples avec plus qu’un mot, des expressions. Je m’amuse avec la famille quand on voyage en campagne et je vois des pancartes indiquant une “auto-cueillette”. Je me demande souvent s’il y a des anglophones qui regardent dans leur Larousse anglais-français pour apprendre ce que veut dire cueillette, et ensuite présument qu’ils peuvent ceuillir des pommes directement de leur voiture, comme un genre de cueillette-au-volant.

Sur une note plus sérieuse, notez si vous ne le savez pas déjà, la différence entre “il n’est pas question”, et “no question about it”. En français, c’est l’équivalent de “no way”, mais en anglais, c’est plutôt “certainement”.

Et là, nous arrivons au mot du jour, concierge. Le premier concierge dont je me souviens était M. Aubry, qui lavait les planchers et les toilettes de mon école primaire. En plus, il habitait un appartement en haut du gymnase avec sa femme. Ils avaient même une corde à linge sur le toît, où une belle journée de printemps j’avais aperçu les sous-vêtement du concierge et je me suis mis à partager mon observation avec tout les autres élèves qui jouaient au ballon-chasseur. “Les culottes de M. Aubry! Les culottes de M. Aubry!”

Mais en anglais, un concierge (prononcé plutôt “KON-si-err-GE”) est une personne qui fait beaucoup plus que nettoyer vos dégâts. Il ou elle vous aide avec toutes sortes de choses. Nous les apercevons plus souvent dans les grands hôtels, mais c’est une profession qui prend beaucoup plus d’ampleur ces jours-ci.

Ce n’est pas tout le monde qui peut se permettre d’engager un “majordome” ou un “butler” en anglais, mais toutes les grandes villes ont un certain nombre de professionels qui se font engager pour règler bien des problèmes pour bien du monde. Ils vendent leurs service en explicant qu’ils peuvent se charger de bien des choses pour ceux qui travaillent de longues heures et qui ensuite sont débordés en arrivant à la maison.

Ceux qui gèrent l’argent des plus fortunés, essayent même parfois de mentioner qu’ils offrent, eux aussi, ce genre de service aux clients avec des gros portefeuilles. Je me demande s’ils ont vraiment des clients qui en bénéficent et qui en sont satisfaits.

Un bon concierge peux vous sauver beaucoup de temps et de misère. Il s’agit d’en trouver un ou une qui prendra le temps de vous connaître et de vous proposer des services qui rentrent dans votre budget.

Steve Legler “gets” business families.
 
He understands the issues that families face, as well as how each family member sees things from their own viewpoint.
 
He specializes in helping business families navigate the difficult areas where the family and the business overlap, by listening to each person’s concerns and ideas.  He then helps the family work together to bridge gaps by building common goals, based on their shared values and vision.
 
His background in family business, his experience running his own family office, along with his education and training in coaching, facilitation, and mediation, make him uniquely suited to the role of advising business families and families of wealth.
 
He is the author of Shift your Family Business (2014), he received his MBA from the Richard  Ivey School of Business (UWO, 1991), is a CFA Charterholder (CFA Institute, 2002), a Family Enterprise Advisor (IFEA 2014), and has received the ACFBA and CFWA accreditations (Family Firm Institute 2014-2015).
 
He prides himself on his ability to help families create the harmony they need to support the legacy they want. To learn how, start by signing up for his monthly newsletter and weekly blogs here.
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Coming Out of the Dark

It was about this time last year that Tom and I started to seriously discuss the business venture that has now become TSI Heritage. Quite a few things have changed for me as a result, but I wanted to share one in particular.

You see, as the head of a Single-Family Office, I preferred to keep a very low profile. When people find out that you manage family money, a few things happen.

Typically, many form an instant opinion about you, not unlike the Steve Forbes scenario that I discussed in last week’s post.  But still others instantly see you as the perfect recipient to their great sales pitch, for whatever financial product that they just happen to be peddling.

So for those reasons, and a few others, keeping a low profile was the way to go for me. And I did not mind. Some of the people who know me may think of me as an extrovert, but I honestly feel more like a natural introvert, so laying low also works with my personality.

So what changed? Well, all of a sudden, now that we decided to offer family-office services to other families, not only can I no longer lay low, I actually have to “sell” myself, and the services that Tom and I now provide to other families.

It is as if I had been hiding, and am now forced out of the dark and into the bright light, saying “Look at me, I can help!” Ugh!

I have always preferred the soft sell, whichever side of the table I happen to be on. When people come on too strong with their sales pitch to me, my guard immediately goes way, way up, and I am usually turned off for good. Now that I am the one who needs to be the pitchman, I certainly prefer the soft sell even more.

In fact, when we started, I told Tom that I wanted to be so exclusive with our service offer that we should only accept clients who were prepared to beg us to take them on.

Obviously we are not that stringent in evaluating potential clients, but it is quite clear that in order for a relationship such as this to work long term, it needs to be a good fit for both parties.

With this venture as in all others, I continue to prefer to crawl before walking and then to walk before running.  So, marketing-wise, my preference has been to go slowly as well.

We set up our website in order to explain our thinking and our proposition.  There will be a few changes to the site coming soon as well, and one change will be to highlight the blog section, as it has become the liveliest part of the site.

Tom and I have also become quite active on LinkedIn, which is a very useful networking tool, more so than I had imagined. If you work in any business or professional capacity and you are not yet on LinkedIn, I strongly encourage you to not only sign up, but to really get into it.

There are plenty of other things that continue to evolve in our venture, and we look forward to moving things forward in 2013. As for coming out of the dark, I understand that the first year is the hardest, so you can expect to hear more from me. But I promise to stick with the soft sell.

 

Steve Legler “gets” business families.
 
He understands the issues that families face, as well as how each family member sees things from their own viewpoint.
 
He specializes in helping business families navigate the difficult areas where the family and the business overlap, by listening to each person’s concerns and ideas.  He then helps the family work together to bridge gaps by building common goals, based on their shared values and vision.
 
His background in family business, his experience running his own family office, along with his education and training in coaching, facilitation, and mediation, make him uniquely suited to the role of advising business families and families of wealth.
 
He is the author of Shift your Family Business (2014), he received his MBA from the Richard  Ivey School of Business (UWO, 1991), is a CFA Charterholder (CFA Institute, 2002), a Family Enterprise Advisor (IFEA 2014), and has received the ACFBA and CFWA accreditations (Family Firm Institute 2014-2015).
 
He prides himself on his ability to help families create the harmony they need to support the legacy they want. To learn how, start by signing up for his monthly newsletter and weekly blogs here.
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Are They Only Telling You What You Want To Hear?

I don’t often start these blog posts with famous quotes, but lots of smart people do that, so why not give it a go? Earlier this week, I was reading one of the daily letters to which I subscribe, The King Report, by Bill King out of Chicago. He finished his daily piece with this:

“When you want to help people you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear.”  -Thomas Sowell.

I immediately printed out that page, highlighted the quotation, and put it aside to eventually use as a blog topic. I showed it to my partner Tom, to my wife, and to my kids. The more I read it, the more I liked it. Let me explain why.

I believe that too many people fall into the group of those who will be more likely to put themselves first and tell you what you want to hear rather than tell you the truth. In the case of wealthy and powerful people, it happens even more often.

My father was a very tough boss, but he was fair. He would often say that he did not have to give people hell, he just had to tell them the truth. And yes, sometimes the truth did hurt. He was very animated and loud, and when it was your turn to hear the truth, you could be sure that others overheard it as well.

As easy as it might have been to try to “protect” ourselves and drift into more of a “tell him what he wants to hear” mode, that would have just make things worse.
The people who worked for him who were willing to give him their true opinion were the ones he counted on the most.

When I showed Tom the quote, it immediately brought back all kinds of memories for both of us. We were two of the people who worked for him the longest, and he relied on us for a variety of things. Occasionally he would tell us that if all we did was agree with him, he really wouldn’t need us. We would make ourselves redundant if we were simply “Yes-Men”.

Having spent so many years in this type of relationship with our boss has had many benefits for both of us. We shared the truth with him, and we got plenty of truth back. The exchanges were often spirited and loud, but always positive, about moving closer to the best decision or course of action, and no lingering hard feelings.

We would offer an opinion, get shot down, roll with the punches and continue the debate. The eventual decision sometimes ended up looking a lot like the ones we suggested, and we knew we had a hand in directing the proper outcome, even if we never heard “hey, you were right”. We knew. He was the boss, he was at the top, he was the one ultimately responsible for whatever we decided.

These days sometimes I will go on a rant about something when talking with Tom, and he will usually just sit there and smile. It is usually only mock anger, and it comes across more as a schtick than anything else. But it brings back memories of working for someone with so much energy and passion, who was not afraid to let his feelings show.

Tom will laugh off my mock anger and remind me that after the number of times he got sh*t from “The Big Guy”, anything that I could throw at him would seem like a light breeze after a tornado.

All that to say that we both have plenty of experience in telling people the truth, even when it contains elements that they do not really want to hear. It is essential to what we offer our clients, because they are likely to have too many of the other types of advisors already.

Steve Legler “gets” business families.
 
He understands the issues that families face, as well as how each family member sees things from their own viewpoint.
 
He specializes in helping business families navigate the difficult areas where the family and the business overlap, by listening to each person’s concerns and ideas.  He then helps the family work together to bridge gaps by building common goals, based on their shared values and vision.
 
His background in family business, his experience running his own family office, along with his education and training in coaching, facilitation, and mediation, make him uniquely suited to the role of advising business families and families of wealth.
 
He is the author of Shift your Family Business (2014), he received his MBA from the Richard  Ivey School of Business (UWO, 1991), is a CFA Charterholder (CFA Institute, 2002), a Family Enterprise Advisor (IFEA 2014), and has received the ACFBA and CFWA accreditations (Family Firm Institute 2014-2015).
 
He prides himself on his ability to help families create the harmony they need to support the legacy they want. To learn how, start by signing up for his monthly newsletter and weekly blogs here.
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What the heck is a Heritage Delegate?

When Tom and I set out to name our new venture, we spent a considerable amount of time trying to include just the right mix of elements in our name. We ran through all sorts of combinations before settling in on TSI Heritage Delegates and Associates.

Since we have begun to get our name out there, I must admit that the name does not necessarily roll of the tongue as easily as some of the others we had considered, but we don’t really mind that either. Personally, I do like it quite a bit, even if it does require a bit of an explanation. Or maybe it’s because it requires an explanation.

We consider ourselves very specialized in terms of the market we serve, i.e. business families, especially those that are in transition mode. With such a specific target market, we really wanted to include the proper words to reflect both to WHOM we are offering our services, as well as HOW we can operate and act for those families.

Let’s start with Heritage. The definition we have included, both on our home page and on the reverse of our business cards is: Property passed down from preceding generations by reason of birth; a tradition. This pre-supposes that there is sufficient property, along with the corresponding complexity, to warrant special attention and advice.

We go on to add a few synonyms, again both on the home page and our cards: Legacy, Estate, Patrimony, and Inheritance. Not everyone needs to be concerned with such issues. The average person who may seek help to figure out how to set aside enough money to retire is already well served with plenty of hungry advisors available from a multitude of providers in that market. While we may be able to help guide some people in that area, we do not offer any special experience or expertise in serving that type of clientele.

That covers the WHO we are best able to service. But now we come to the word that is most likely to raise eyebrows when people see or hear our name, Delegates. So here again we provide both a definition and some synonyms to help lay out the way we our positioning ourselves to potential clients.

We use the straightforward definition  “Person of trust designated to act for or represent another”. As synonyms we have: Agent, confidant, deputy, stand-in, substitute. Most family business founders who have become successful enough to accumulate significant assets could probably point to a number of key factors that allowed them to succeed. I am willing to bet that most had some special skill or field of knowledge, and as their business grew they needed to be able to delegate.

One of our biggest challenges is to have these successful business people understand that they should spend the time and make the necessary efforts to make sure that they take care of their heritage, or legacy, in order to ensure that the things that they worked so hard for will continue to serve them and their families both now and long after they are gone.

Many do not know where to begin, or they may not be anxious to get into the detailed work necessary to do it properly. We believe that by finding trusted advisors to whom they can once again DELEGATE, as they did in building their businesses, they can undertake the planning and make the decisions necessary in this important area of their lives.

As for our Associates, these are the variety of specialists in their respective fields to whom we turn, together with the wealth owner, in order to execute the plans we worked out together.

So to answer the question in the title, a “Heritage Delegate” is someone who has experience and expertise in dealing with heritage issues, who is also a person of trust, to the point where they are trusted enough to act for another.

In dealing this way, the wealth owner is relieved of many of the arduous details, giving them peace of mind and allowing them to enjoy their life, knowing that their affairs are being handled in the way they planned, and with two confidants just a phone call away to discuss any questions or new challenges.

As for the TSI part of our name, if you go to our FAQ section of our website, the last question deals with the TSI part of our name. Some day I will write a blog about this as well.

Steve Legler “gets” business families.
 
He understands the issues that families face, as well as how each family member sees things from their own viewpoint.
 
He specializes in helping business families navigate the difficult areas where the family and the business overlap, by listening to each person’s concerns and ideas.  He then helps the family work together to bridge gaps by building common goals, based on their shared values and vision.
 
His background in family business, his experience running his own family office, along with his education and training in coaching, facilitation, and mediation, make him uniquely suited to the role of advising business families and families of wealth.
 
He is the author of Shift your Family Business (2014), he received his MBA from the Richard  Ivey School of Business (UWO, 1991), is a CFA Charterholder (CFA Institute, 2002), a Family Enterprise Advisor (IFEA 2014), and has received the ACFBA and CFWA accreditations (Family Firm Institute 2014-2015).
 
He prides himself on his ability to help families create the harmony they need to support the legacy they want. To learn how, start by signing up for his monthly newsletter and weekly blogs here.
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What Can You Learn from a FOX? Part 3

Open Architecture? Isn’t that a Computer Term?

This will be the third and final blog post on ideas that came out of the recent Family Office eXchange workshop that we recently attended in NYC. In my latest post, I mentioned that this term through me for a bit of a loop when I first heard it during the personal intros that all the participants were asked to make.

A man was describing the Multi-Family Office that he worked for, and was proudly stating that they were 100% “open architecture”. I recognized that phrase, having heard it in the past, but I was pretty sure that it had something to do with computer programming.

Putting it into the context of what the man was saying, and hearing it again a couple of other times later that first morning, it began to make sense to me. But the surprising part for me was not that this firm was 100% “open architecture”; it was that any other firm would NOT be. Let me explain.

This man was right to be proud of his firm, because their policy was to offer their clients all sorts of investment products and services, offered by all sorts of companies. That sounds great, and it is. But what, then, do other firms do? This sounds like a great idea, offering your clients choices, allowing them to pick and choose various investment products and services from every possible vendor.

But that is my point. It is so obvious to me, and hopefully anyone reading this, that this is the way that advisors can best serve the needs of their clients.  So why doesn’t everyone do it?

My father used to say that there are really only two reasons to do something: for love, or for money. When some advisor suggests that you invest in the financial products that just happen to come from the same employer that they work for, do you think that they are doing it for love? Me neither.

The move to open architecture is long overdue, but it is proceeding at a snail’s pace. A Google search of the term landed me on the website of a large US trust company, which had a brief document that talked about the use of open architecture by trustees.

“Conflicts of interest often occur when institutions offer only proprietary (in-house) products”. It also spoke of “clients’ uneasiness over lack of objectivity”, and ended with a statement about a new definition of the term “trusted advisor” that “provides the best advice possible without limitations on choices of investment options”

That document was dated less than a year ago. What took you so long? Then I came across a recent issue of Barron’s magazine with a story on the subject. It noted that some firms started offering open architecture  “Ten or more years ago”, but that others are just getting around to it.

Unfortunately for Canadians, many investment trends seem to take a while to reach across the border. A bit like multi-family offices. But they do go well together. We don’t have any products to sell, so it’s a no-brainer for us.

Back to my dad again: “Selling is reducing your inventory. Marketing is solving the customer’s problem.”  Personally, I hate selling, and I always have. The only thing we are “selling” now is our services, which, when you think about it, is really marketing. We know that there are people facing the same sorts of situations and problems that we have dealt with for years.  And we know that we can help solve them.

I always did like marketing better than selling.

Steve Legler “gets” business families.
 
He understands the issues that families face, as well as how each family member sees things from their own viewpoint.
 
He specializes in helping business families navigate the difficult areas where the family and the business overlap, by listening to each person’s concerns and ideas.  He then helps the family work together to bridge gaps by building common goals, based on their shared values and vision.
 
His background in family business, his experience running his own family office, along with his education and training in coaching, facilitation, and mediation, make him uniquely suited to the role of advising business families and families of wealth.
 
He is the author of Shift your Family Business (2014), he received his MBA from the Richard  Ivey School of Business (UWO, 1991), is a CFA Charterholder (CFA Institute, 2002), a Family Enterprise Advisor (IFEA 2014), and has received the ACFBA and CFWA accreditations (Family Firm Institute 2014-2015).
 
He prides himself on his ability to help families create the harmony they need to support the legacy they want. To learn how, start by signing up for his monthly newsletter and weekly blogs here.
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What Can You Learn from a FOX? Part 2

Transactions Vs. Transitions

My last blog was about the FOX workshop that Tom and I attended in NYC a little over a week ago.  I ended it off talking about the “discovery” process, which can be summarized as follows: If you want to get somewhere, first you need to figure out where you are now.

It all sounds so simple, but as I often say, simple does not always mean easy. In fact, it rarely does.  What does help to do difficult things, though, is to have them explained in simple terms. I pride myself on being able to do that.

One of the major themes that came through at the FOX conference was that advisors in our business are sought after in times of transition.  It is also at these times that our value to our clients is most apparent.

The transition we most often associate with family businesses is succession. It is one of those subjects that seems to get put off, for a couple of major reasons. Number one is that the founder is too busy running their business to “waste” time on such things. The second reason is that it is not as easy as it sounds.

It is simple to say that you should have a succession plan, but not easy to come up with one and put it in place. But succession is just one of the major transitions that come up, and unfortunately most of the other transitions suffer from the same “sounds simple, but isn’t easy” reality.

At the conference the attendees related stories about selling a business, divorce, remarriage, illness, death, children entering or leaving the business, family disputes, reconstituted families, placing people in nursing homes and even in rehab. We pretty well ran the gamut of things that can happen to a business or wealthy family.

The point I want to make here is that at times like these, it is reassuring to be assisted by people who help you focus on the big picture. These are major events, and often major transitions in the evolution of the family.
Many advisors look at only one small portion of the picture, and that is usually fine as well. But allow me to bring in the other word from the title of this blog: Transactions. A transaction is simply a one-time event.

You buy 1000 shares of a stock in your account, and you get a transaction slip. You go to your notary to sign a document to sell a property, it gets recorded, you get an invoice; more transactions.

These transactions are usually handled by specialists who handle these types of transactions every day, all day long. You cannot expect them to have the big picture view to advise you when it comes to the transitions in your life.

It is not always easy to find the kind of advice that you are looking for. Trust is a HUGE issue, as it should be. But right along with trust is objectivity. Yes, objectivity.

An objective advisor is someone who helps you decide what to do and how to do it, without regard to how he/she (the advisor) can benefit. Please do not forget about this when deciding whose counsel to take.

I will deal with that in my next blog, where we will get into another new term that we came across at FOX, that of Open Architecture.  It took me a minute or two to figure out what the others were talking about when they used that term, and I needed to explain it to Tom at the coffee break.

I will put up a blog on the subject in the coming week. I hope it will be informative, and as usual, I will try to keep it from being technical.

Steve Legler “gets” business families.
 
He understands the issues that families face, as well as how each family member sees things from their own viewpoint.
 
He specializes in helping business families navigate the difficult areas where the family and the business overlap, by listening to each person’s concerns and ideas.  He then helps the family work together to bridge gaps by building common goals, based on their shared values and vision.
 
His background in family business, his experience running his own family office, along with his education and training in coaching, facilitation, and mediation, make him uniquely suited to the role of advising business families and families of wealth.
 
He is the author of Shift your Family Business (2014), he received his MBA from the Richard  Ivey School of Business (UWO, 1991), is a CFA Charterholder (CFA Institute, 2002), a Family Enterprise Advisor (IFEA 2014), and has received the ACFBA and CFWA accreditations (Family Firm Institute 2014-2015).
 
He prides himself on his ability to help families create the harmony they need to support the legacy they want. To learn how, start by signing up for his monthly newsletter and weekly blogs here.
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