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Finding the Liquidity Sweet Spot for your Family

Searching for the “Goldilocks Zone”

These weekly missives have been inspired by a variety of sparks over the years, and this one is sort of a “mish-mash” because it comes from a number of places.

I’ve long wanted to incorporate a great quote from a colleague into a blog, and I’ll finally do it in this post.

I love it when some social media interaction on one of my posts creates a new spark, and that’s also the case here.

And, when I speak with potential clients about situations that concern them, that also makes me want to share my ideas here too.

So let’s dive into the deep end and look at some liquidity issues for families (see what I did there?).

An Old LinkedIn Post Gets a “Yeah-But!”

My social media folks schedule regular posts from my accounts on LinkedIn and Twitter, which weave in both my new weekly posts along with plenty of “recycled” content from days gone by.

I continuously create regular content, which I enjoy, but if you only post and repost the same piece several times over and over each week, it may not be as well received as when you share more variety.

Recently, a post about liquidity from a few years ago sparked a comment that seemed to take an opposite view to one of the points I made. See Liquidity Events in a FamBiz – Pros & Cons.

They took issue with the fact that I suggested that it can make sense to not share too much liquidity right after a business is sold, for a variety of reasons.

The alternate viewpoint is also quite valid, of course, as there are cases where a family has plenty of wealth and yet most family members will wait years or even decades before they will see any direct benefit from it.

“It’s Great That We’re Wealthy, But…”

This made me recall that great quote from my friend and colleague Travis Harms, another guy who regularly creates great content for this field.

He shared with me the way one family member put it to him: 

                    “Yes, thanks, it’s great that we’re wealthy. 

                         But, can we also have some money?”

Bang! Drop the mic! What a great way to summarize the way so many rising generation family members feel.

Imagine living in a town where everyone knows that you are part of the family that owns an extra-large enterprise.

Everyone knows that you’re wealthy, and yet they look down on you because you appear “cheap” more often than not.

Little do they know, you may own a portion of a large asset base, but you’re still working your butt off each week just to pay the mortgage on your modest house.

An Apple a Day – And Then the Orchard!

That brings me to a family I recently heard about, where the parents were quite wealthy yet were successful in keeping secret the extent of their wealth from their sons.

One son was being modestly supported to a certain extent due to some personal difficulties, yet he would eventually stand to inherit way more than he could reasonably spend in his remaining lifetime.

As I thought about a metaphor for this, I landed on getting an apple a day from your parents, because they didn’t want to spoil you.

You ate that apple every day, kept the doctor away, and then after the parent’s funeral, you discovered that you now own an orchard!

All along, you knew they had a few apple trees in the backyard, and assumed that was the extent of it.

Lots of Planning, Lots of Sharing, Lots of Transparency

The “answers”, if there are any, to these situations are never simple.

However, when there is a lot of planning, a lot of sharing, and a lot of transparency around what the leading generation is hoping to accomplish with the decisions they make, things generally go better than when the opposite track is taken.

When there’s no planning, no sharing, and no transparency, it’s a recipe for disappointment, mistrust, confusion, and conflict.

Taking Advice Versus Co-Creation

Too often, such parents blindly rely on the advice of certain professionals whose viewpoint is conflicted by their desire to remain part of the picture in managing the wealth of the senior generation.

Once the offspring are mature enough to understand what will eventually be coming their way, I recommend they also become involved in co-creating their future as stewards of the family wealth.

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Overdue 4-D Connections at FEC Symposium

Overdue 4-D Connections at FEC Symposium

So Refreshing after Years of 2-D

Far be it for me to declare an end to the Covid pandemic, but it sure feels like we’ve entered back into the land of face-to-face connections with colleagues and clients, both new and old.

I’ve just spent a few great days in Vancouver at the Family Enterprise Canada (FEC) Symposium, and I’m more energized than I’ve been in a long time.

The reasons for my positivity are varied, but mostly stem from so much pent up demand within me and others to actually spend time with other like-minded people, in each others’ physical company.

I can’t tell you how many times I shared face-to-face conversations with familiar people who I had only ever seen on Zoom, in two dimensions (2-D).

I even got so tired of my own joke about this, “So nice to see you in 3-D” that I decided I needed to go a dimension further, but you’ll need to stick around to the end for that punchline.

 

Let Me Count the Ways

FEC brings together two major constituencies, members of enterprising families, and advisors to such families who’ve completed FEC’s family enterprise advisor (FEA) designation. There are now over 400 FEA designates, and our numbers at this sold-out Symposium were well into triple digits.

I got reacquainted with several colleagues whose hands I’d already shaken in years past, and also to finally size up some people I’ve known for a while but whose height I’d been unable to assess thus far.

Not that that’s crucial, but more than one person told me that I’m taller than they expected from our online encounters, where Zoom is the great height equalizer.

I even had a chance to meet a former client in attendance, who brought me up to speed on their family’s progress since I last saw them a few years back.

I also slipped out of the hotel briefly to meet with a current BC-based coaching client who happened to be in Vancouver at the same time.

Thanks to CC who alerted me to his presence and for inviting me to their work meeting; it was so cool to see a group of advisors in the same room together working to develop solutions for a complex family situation.

 

Fun Being Back Up Onstage

By far the key element of my time there that created the most lasting memories was the fact that I had been recruited to co-MC the event over the two main days.

Getting mic’ed up and going up onto the stage to introduce all the wonderful session facilitators was an honour and a pleasure.

Getting to know my co-host, Keita Demming, and developing the rapport required to pull that off relatively seamlessly is a testament to his flexibility in dealing with my “Costello” to his “Abbott”.

The kind feedback I received from so many people, friends and strangers alike, will keep me pumped for months to come.

Something about being in a room full of family business types makes me feel like I’m in my element and that I’ve found “my people”.

 

True and Authentic Sharing of Experiences

The format of Symposium included a few breakout sessions where the family members and advisors went to separate sessions, but the majority of the time was spent together in plenary sessions.

There was lots of magic in those, because of they way they’d been ingeniously set up, which was quite well received.

The main room sessions were mostly panels moderated by seasoned family business advisors, where the panelists came from family enterprises.

The result was so much valuable sharing of true, lived family business experiences, which benefits both family attendees and the many FEA’s in the room.

 

So, What About that “4th” Dimension?

Alright, so what did I mean earlier when I teased about the fourth dimension? Well, so many of the people I’ve met working in this field during the past decade are more than just colleagues, they have become true friends.

And like many friends, when I see them for the first time in a while, hugs are exchanged.

It’s tough to replicate a hug in an online meeting.

Thanks to Covid, we now need to make sure a hug is welcome, and most were.

I’m looking forward to more 4-D encounters later this year, at the PPI Rendez-Vous in Denver in July, and FFI in Boston in October.

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Curiosity as the Antidote to Assumptions in Families

We All Know What Happens When We Assume

For me it was Mr. McGee, a High School teacher, who first shared the dangers of making assumptions. I cannot recall the context of this lesson from circa 1980, but I distinctly remember him writing the word “ASSUME” on the chalkboard.

He then said, “You know what happens when you assume?”

The class waited for the punchline. He then drew two short vertical lines, before and after the “U”, leaving three distinct words:

A  S  S   [  U  ]   M  E

“You make an ASS out of U and ME”

That was over 40 years ago and it’s still with me, so let’s just say the message stuck.

And We Are ALL Guilty of It

I’m pretty sure most readers will have heard some version of this tale somewhere along the way, and if not, feel free to borrow the one from Mr. McGee.

And, not surprisingly, all of us are also certainly guilty of making assumptions, because, well, you can’t not make them sometimes!

But what if there were an antidote that we could dream up that could help us minimize those occasions where we risk making an ass out of each other, especially with important people in our lives, like our family members?

Well I’ve got good news, there is one. And we all have some of it in us, and we can improve with practice.

My title has already given it away, but for those of you who already got lost in my prose (and I don’t want to assume that you recall the title of this blog) it’s curiosity.

A Coaching Webinar as Source

The idea for this post came a while back when I was watching a webinar about coaching, and presenter said, “The greatest resistance to curiosity is assumptions”.

I jotted that down because I felt like there was some juice to be squeezed from it.

But as I thought about it from many family business contexts with which I am familiar, I decided to turn it around and focus on the assumptions that too many people make about family members.

Rather than looking at “resistance to curiosity”, I want to concentrate on using curiosity to overcome the many problems that come from not having enough curious conversations.

It Comes Down to Attitude

My guess is that senior generation family members are typically guilty of this a bit more often, but I’m sure it happens in every generation.

It typically stems from an attitude of believing you know things you just never bothered to verify.

“Of course the kids will want to work in the family business” comes to mind for me, personally.  In my case it also came along with a healthy dose of not leaving me any choice.

My Dad knew what was best for me, or so he surely believed. Of course his plans for me also happened to be what he thought was best for him.

He could have been much more curious about what I wanted, but he never allowed himself to go there, just in case he’d learn something he didn’t really want to know.

Someone from Outside the Family as a Spark

So how might one go about sparking the kind of curiosity that I’m talking about here?

When the group of people is always exactly the same, it’s easy to get into a rut, and there isn’t much room for curiosity.

But what happens when an outsider shows up with the group, and that person is curious and begins to ask questions to satisfy their curiosity?

This could be just the right way for some new subjects and ideas to land on the table for consideration.

There are many things I should have pushed back on with my Dad, but I did not, for all kinds of reasons, many of which are more clear to me now than they were decades ago.

Could a well-placed and well-meaning outsider have helped spark certain discussions that could have been started, so that I could shine a spotlight on some of the many assumptions he had made about me?

Recognizing That Something’s Amiss

Sometimes you know that something is amiss and if you take the time to ask what you’re assuming, you’ll likely be onto something.

If you can then get curious and actually ask questions so that you can learn, you’ll be going in the right direction.

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Facing Up to Addiction in Family Enterprise – 5 Considerations

Entering Uncharted Territory

This week we’re entering some new territory, in a number of ways. First off, I took up this topic based on a suggestion from a reader I’ve never met.

I received a LinkedIn message a while back asking me to talk about addiction and the role it plays, and was intrigued.

I also realized that this potentially huge topic can be a pretty big deal for some families who are trying to create and pass down a legacy, and yet I’ve yet to discuss it here, despite having written over 400 posts.

That all changes now, as I want to share my thoughts on what is also “uncharted territory” for many families, who are often unprepared for how they should respond when a family member has an addiction.

I decided to revisit a version of the “5 Things” blogs I’ve done over the years, much to the dismay of my wife, who wonders aloud why it’s always five things, and never four or six…

1.  You Cannot Change Someone Else

As much as we’d all like this to be different, you cannot change someone else. You can try, and many do, but true change really only occurs when the “changee” does the work.

This can be the most difficult realisation of your life, especially as a parent. 

When they have young children, parents can and do manage to create many of the changes they hope to with their offspring. 

Unfortunately, at some point, this ends. Then, the more a parent wants something, the less likely their children are to acquiesce.

If your instinct is to simply insist more forcefully, you’re barking up the wrong tree.

2. Look to Provide Help, Not to Punish

An initial reaction to a family member’s addiction might be to use some form of punishment to try to curb the unwanted behaviour.

Punishment, whether simply threatened or actually enacted, will often backfire and make matters more difficult to fix.

Nobody sets out to become addicted to anything. 

Yes, there’s often some behaviour involved that’s less than desirable, but by the time they reach the stage of addiction, it’s no longer an easily-solvable problem.

Offering help, in the form of support and understanding, will go much further, and hopefully get the addicted person to cooperate, as opposed to rebel, which is what punishment will often engender.

3. Set Realistic Expectations

There’s no magic wand that will make an addiction disappear overnight. 

These situations all vary, of course, based on what the addiction is, how long it’s been going on and how deeply affected the person is, and whether this is the first time or not.

Giving the whole situation the time required to be satisfactorily resolved is what I suggest, and it’s better to err on the side of planning for things to take more time (months/years) than less (days/weeks).

4. Work on Organizing the Rest of the Family

While the addicted family member seems to take up a lot of time and focus, you shouldn’t neglect the rest of the family.

In fact, I think it makes sense for most families to organize themselves to survive for the long term as if the addicted person will never get over whatever their particular affliction may be.

This is a variation on “plan for the worst” but also hope for the best.

If the addicted family member is putting the enterprise at risk, finding ways to minimize and eliminate those risks should quickly become the focus, and that means having different people assume certain key roles.

Making a plan that you can all work on together to get through this makes sense and should be a priority.

5. Bring in Outside Help to Manage It

Few families are well equipped to deal with such issues on their own.

Bringing in outside expertise makes sense for dealing with the addicted person, of course, but may also make lots of sense for the rest of the family as they deal with things in a new way.

I hold himself out as such a resource for families, so this suggestion shouldn’t come as a huge surprise to anyone reading this, of course.

But an addicted family member creates emotional reactions that need to be managed.

You need to reduce the “reactions” and instead focus on a constructive “response”.

Ignoring the issue and hoping it will disappear rarely works out well.

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Leading Family Firms at IVEY

This week I attended a two-day program in London Ontario, at the fantastic Ivey Spencer Leadership Centre. The course was put on by the Ivey Business Families Centre, which is run by David Simpson.

David has been running the “Leading Family Firms” program for 6 years, bringing in families who are in business together, and getting them to learn about, and start talking about, some of the important issues that so often get too little attention.

We had an eclectic mix of people in the room, including a couple of brothers who are part of a third-generation company along with some of their cousins; two brothers-in-law who work along with two of their other brothers-in-law; as well as a Mom & Dad, & Son team.

In addition, we had a father with his recently graduated Ivey daughter, who does not work in Dad’s business, but who has been helping guide him in many ways thanks to her Ivey degree, as well as a handful of current Ivey students who come from family businesses to which they will likely eventually return.

I never get tired of hearing people’s stories about working with their families. There are always similarities to other situations, but then there are huge differences too. But because of this, there is always something we can learn from others in this field. Some is “what to do”, and some is “what NOT to do”.

Simpson started off the first day by congratulating everyone who was there. He clearly recognized that making the effort to take two full days away from your business is not a step that everyone is prepared to make, but that he was happy that they had all taken a couple of days to work ON their businesses (and their families!) instead of IN their businesses.

The course itself is based on the Roadmap course put together by the Business Families Foundation, which includes a series of videos about the ficticious Dupont family, and the trials and tribulations they face in running their hotel business. The videos are a bit dated and over-acted, but they do a great job of depicting situations that participants can identify with, and thus are wonderful conversation starters.

And conversations are the single biggest key to most of the issues that business families face. Actually, maybe I should say that conversations that have not happended are often the source of most of the problems that arise in family businesses.

While I was doing the Family Enterprise Advisor program this year, we used many of the same videos, and covered a lot of the same topics. One thing I can attest to is that the people who live in a business family are much faster at learning this stuff than most advisors.

Simpson told me beforehand that he accelerates the material when teaching families because a slower pace just isn’t needed. Having gone through it with him now, I get his point. But he gets it because he has been involved on all sides in family business with his own family and as a teacher in the Entrepreneurship program at Ivey.

On Friday afternoon as we were wrapping up, each person was asked to commit to one or two things that they were going to do in the coming months. There seemed to have been lots of progress made over two short days, as people were committing to some key steps that they were planning on taking very soon, which otherwise might have been left to “someday”.

All in all, it was an interesting, fun, and educational program, and I am certain everyone who was there found it worthwhile.

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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Five Teens in a Cottage

Late August has always had a certain feel to it for me, but this year is different. Maybe it’s because we took an extra-long vacation in July, or because the weather has been really good, or maybe because we brought the dogs to the cottage so the place feels more like home now.

Or maybe it’s because instead of only worrying about two kids, we are now responsible for five teens for a couple of weeks!

Our kids have been curling for the past 3 winters, and last year we joined a new club. This got them to a more competitive level, which came with new teammates who have become good friends. Our cottage is within a 45-minute drive of one of the country’s top junior curling camps, featuring a couple of former world champions.

I thought it would be a great idea for our kids to attend the camp and take advantage of the opportunity to learn form some of the best. It seems some of the parents of their new friends also wanted to take advantage of that opportunity, and since we have a place not far away, of course they were all welcome to stay here with us.

I guess the one thing that I had not been mentally prepared for was now being the temporary “father” to 5 teenagers, rather that just our 2. My wife has been handling the “Mom” role in exemplary fashion, to no one’s surprise.

We geared up for the arrival of the extra bodies by adding a camper where the three girls sleep, and the two boys are in the kids’ room. The kitchen, living and dining rooms are just big enough to handle the load. The fridge and pantry are well stocked, the WiFi works pretty well, and I can easily control access to it by shutting the unit down at night.

But the parenting is exhausting. They are not bad kids, they are actually very good kids, all of them. But they are all so different. And so each one of them needs to be handled in their own special way. Handling them one-on-one and as a group is completely different too.

But as mentally draining as it is, I love the experience because there is so much to learn, and along with that, so much to teach too.

I love to take the time to explain things to my kids, on whatever subject comes up on any given day. It could be something we see on TV, something one of us comes across on the internet, or something that happened at school that day. I often start with “Do you understand why such-and-such is that way?” or “Do you understand what so-and-so meant when they said that?”

With three extra people around the opportunities to explain things multiplies.

Probably the best part of the arrangement is that our kids are learning how other kids don’t have it quite so easy as they do in life. I like to think that they appreciate what we have and how their parents treat them. They are very lucky, and we are lucky to have them too.

I often preach about communication and how important it is to family relationships. I also like to think that I am a living, breathing example of what I preach. I hope my kids agree. Please don’t forget, it’s not just what you say, how you say it is usually more important.

After this, if they end up being better curlers, that will be a bonus.

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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Les expériences partagées comme point en commun

Je suis revenu de belles vacances cette semaine, après avoir passé presque trois semaines au Brésil avec ma famille. Comme de raison, les gens que je rencontre me posent tous la même question, soit, “Puis, comment ça a été?”

Après la première réponse, qui fut toujours “fantastique” ou une autre adjectif semblable, je suis porté à ajouter que c’est les expériences partagées que nous avons vécues ensemble qui seront les plus beaux souvenirs pour moi. Évidemment, j’espère que ça sera pareil pour mes enfants.

Ça me rappelle d’autres vacances que nous avons prises ensemble au fil des années, mais, que les enfants semblent avoir oubliées en grande partie. Maintenant agés de 12 et 13 ans, je crois que les souvenirs seront gravés un peu plus profondémment.

Nous avons vécu des moments inespérés de l’Amazonie jusqu’aux chutes d’Iguaçu, en passant par Sao Paulo et Rio, en plus de plusieurs plages et parcs nationaux. Plus qu’une semaine avec une famille d’amis Brésiliens, des matchs de futbol avec des foules électrisantes, en plus de beaucoup d’animaux sauvages qu’on ne voit pas chez nous.

Mais ça sera surtout les petits moments entre nous qui resteront avec moi à long terme.

Les expériences que nous vivons et que d’autres ont déjà vécu peuvent aussi servir de point commun, même quand nous ne les vivons pas ensemble ou au même moment. Je parle ici de gens qui nous rencontrons, et que par la suite on apprend que nous avons étudié à la même école, ou qui ont joué dans une même équipe, ou qui ont vécu une certaine expérience.

J’ai eu le malheur d’avoir petit accident de voiture il y a une quinzaine d’années. En sortant de nos autos, j’ai fait une échange de carte d’affaires avec l’autre conducteur. Il a regardé ma carte et m’a demandé, “MBA? Quelle école?” Je lui dit “Western” (Maintenant connu comme Ivey). “Moi aussi”, il répond. Avec ça, nous étions sur la même longueur d’ondes, et il m’a dit que s’il y avait des dommages, il m’appellerait.

Je me rappelle d’avoir lu une histoire sur Pat Burns, coach de hockey. Il n’avait pas un agent comme les autres, il faisait confiance à son cousin, Robin Burns, ex joueur de la LNH, mais aussi un homme d’affaires avec beaucoup de succès et très respecté.

Après avoir conclu une entente entre Pat et les Bruins, le négociateur de l’équipe avait demandé à Robin, “Where did you go to law school?”, en présumant que lui aussi était avocat de profession. C’est un exemple qui démontre que la façon dont on agit peut créer l’illusion que nous avons vécu une expérience semblable, avec un résultat positif.

Quand on parle de familles en affaires, un point contentieux peut se développer entre les membres de la famille qui travaillent dans l’entreprise et ceux qui ne sont pas employé. C’est souvent à cause du manque d’expériences partagées que les problèmes surviennent.

Voilà l’importance de la communication, et même de faire certain de planifier des activités pour toute la famille pour servir de point commun et d’expériences partagées. Il s’agit d’un bon début pour débuter des discussions et d’encourager la communication entre tous les membres de la famille.

Denièrement, j’aimerais souligner que quand les gens qui travaillent dans une entreprises familiales ont la chance de s’entretenir avec des conseillers qui ont eux aussi déjà travailler au sein d’une compagnie familiale, le fait d’avoir vécu des experiences semblables peut aussi aider à mener à un niveau de compréhension plus profond, plus rapidement.

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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Lost in the Woods, without a Guide

In a strange set of coincidences, this turned out to be “University Week” for me. I am writing this in Lewisburg Pennsylvania, home of Bucknell University.

I am here mostly as chauffeur for my mother, who today witnessed the first University graduation of one of her grandchildren. I also got to watch my niece walk across the stage and pick up that diploma that she worked towards these past four years.

Listening to speeches always gets me thinking, and today a lot of time was spent praising the faculty. I guess that every school thinks that they have great teachers, but they sure did a great job of making a believer out of me here today.

Earlier this week, I had the pleasure of meeting some important people from the business schools of a few of the Montreal-based Universities.

As a participant in the FEA Program in Toronto this year (given by UBC’s Sauder Business Families Centre) I am interested in helping the Institute of Family Enterprise Advisors (IFEA) expand their reach across Canada, as they look for the right education partners.

I had offered their new President any help I could with the search for Quebec partner(s). This week she was in Montreal, and I met with her and people from HEC, McGill, and Concordia.

Now most of the talks were only in their very early stages and it is way too early to say what if anything may develop as a result. But for me it was an opportunity to talk about (okay, I was mostly listening) programs, courses, instructors, designations, etc.

The instructors that we have had in the FEAP course modules that I have had thus far have all been excellent and inspirational. Being involved in the IFEA meeting in Montreal also got me pumped up even more about the program and the ways I expect that it will evolve and help business families in the future.

Coming to the Commencement this weekend at Bucknell was a further catalyst for me personally, as I heard a few professors talk about how inspired they are when they teach. Knowing that my newly-graduated niece is going into teaching (and we all just know that she will be fantastic at it) also has me thinking more and more about this subject.

We have all heard the expression, “Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach”. Sometimes it is true. But most of the time it is full of crap. The best teachers have of course already DONE. And now they are teaching others.

I have been married for 20 years. My wife knows me pretty well. She often used to tell me that I should write a book. Well I now write a weekly blog. She also often tells me that I should be a teacher. I have always agreed with her that it would be interesting and I believe I would be pretty good at it.

But until now, I never really had anything for which I had enough passion to teach. If you have followed my recent posts, you will know that I am slowly (or maybe quickly) discovering that family business is my passion.

I have lived it, I understand it, from all the angles. I know that it is complex and that there are many issues that need to be discussed, and that often those issues are not discussed.

Teaching, and family business. Time to figure out how to put it all together. Stay tuned. If you have any ideas, I am all ears.

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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Those Who CAN, Teach

In a strange set of coincidences, this turned out to be “University Week” for me. I am writing this in Lewisburg Pennsylvania, home of Bucknell University.

I am here mostly as chauffeur for my mother, who today witnessed the first University graduation of one of her grandchildren. I also got to watch my niece walk across the stage and pick up that diploma that she worked towards these past four years.

Listening to speeches always gets me thinking, and today a lot of time was spent praising the faculty. I guess that every school thinks that they have great teachers, but they sure did a great job of making a believer out of me here today.

Earlier this week, I had the pleasure of meeting some important people from the business schools of a few of the Montreal-based Universities.

As a participant in the FEA Program in Toronto this year (given by UBC’s Sauder Business Families Centre) I am interested in helping the Institute of Family Enterprise Advisors (IFEA) expand their reach across Canada, as they look for the right education partners.

I had offered their new President any help I could with the search for Quebec partner(s). This week she was in Montreal, and I met with her and people from HEC, McGill, and Concordia.

Now most of the talks were only in their very early stages and it is way too early to say what if anything may develop as a result. But for me it was an opportunity to talk about (okay, I was mostly listening) programs, courses, instructors, designations, etc.

The instructors that we have had in the FEAP course modules that I have had thus far have all been excellent and inspirational. Being involved in the IFEA meeting in Montreal also got me pumped up even more about the program and the ways I expect that it will evolve and help business families in the future.

Coming to the Commencement this weekend at Bucknell was a further catalyst for me personally, as I heard a few professors talk about how inspired they are when they teach. Knowing that my newly-graduated niece is going into teaching (and we all just know that she will be fantastic at it) also has me thinking more and more about this subject.

We have all heard the expression, “Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach”. Sometimes it is true. But most of the time it is full of crap. The best teachers have of course already DONE. And now they are teaching others.

I have been married for 20 years. My wife knows me pretty well. She often used to tell me that I should write a book. Well I now write a weekly blog. She also often tells me that I should be a teacher. I have always agreed with her that it would be interesting and I believe I would be pretty good at it.

But until now, I never really had anything for which I had enough passion to teach. If you have followed my recent posts, you will know that I am slowly (or maybe quickly) discovering that family business is my passion.

I have lived it, I understand it, from all the angles. I know that it is complex and that there are many issues that need to be discussed, and that often those issues are not discussed.

Teaching, and family business. Time to figure out how to put it all together. Stay tuned. If you have any ideas, I am all ears.

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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Blame it on Cinderella

This week I attended the CFA Institute’s Wealth Management conference in Boston. It’s an annual event that will be in L.A. next year, but since this time it was so close to Montreal, I figured it was worth the five-hour drive to hear the great speakers they had lined up.

The conference was really good in so many ways, and I was having trouble deciding which of the 12 presentations I would use as the inspiration for this week’s blog.

As I was driving home through the White Mountains of New Hampshire and the Green Mountains of Vermont, something happened that made me push the conference topics to the back burner.

It wasn’t something that I saw though. It was something that I heard, on the radio.  When I have a long drive I always worry about falling asleep at the wheel, although it is much less of a problem for me lately, since I started sleeping better every night thanks to my CPAP machine.

To make sure that I stay awake while driving, I have a strong preference for talk radio. My wife and kids can’t stand talk radio, but I was alone, so it was a great chance to catch up on what Rush Limbaugh and the like were talking about on the US airwaves.

But when you are driving through the mountains and trying to listen to the radio, staying on any one station for more than 15 minutes is often a challenge. So what ends up happening is that every few minutes, I just hit the search button until something comes in with a strong enough signal.

Now besides talk radio, the other thing that usually keeps me awake is country music. I can’t say that I am a huge fan, but I have very eclectic tastes in music, and with country music the lyrics are usually such that you can sing along to any song even though you have never heard it before.

It’s hard to fall asleep when you are singing. And given the choice between listening to talk radio or listening to me sing in the car, I can tell you that my family would likely learn to LOVE talk radio. But I was alone, so country music it would be, at least for a song or two.

That was when Stealing Cinderella came on. I thought I recognized the singer’s voice, but it turns out that he just sounded like most other country singers, and I couldn’t even tell you his name now without googling it. But the lyrics really got to me.

It’s about a guy going to his girlfriend’s father’s house to ask for permission to marry her. Do guys still do that? I don’t know, but a little over 20 years ago, I did it. So the song brought back instant memories, especially the reaction I got from my father-in-law, who wished me luck but (wrongly) assumed that his daughter was not the marrying type.

But then the song goes on to describe the family photos that are placed all over the living room, including many of the little girl as she was growing up, riding her first bike, jumping on the bed, and of course playing Cinderella.

Now it was the heartstrings of the father of the 11-year-old daughter that were being tugged on. Yikes, where the heck did the time go?
In 30 seconds I went from reliving the experience of asking for the go-ahead to marry one man’s “Cinderella”, to fast-forwarding who knows how many years to some guy coming by and trying to steal MY Cinderella.

I know, she’s only 11, but ten years ago she was 1 and it feels like it was yesterday. And in ten years she will be 21 and who knows what future awaits her.

Too much to think about. Better stay off the Country Music stations and stick to talk radio.

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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