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Family Office Advisory with Ben Cashion · Family Capital Podcast

0:00
Foreign.
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Welcome back to the Family Capital Podcast.
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This week, we're excited to have another guest.
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Ben Cashin from Cornerstone Coaching is joining us on the podcast.
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Ben, welcome to the show.
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I'm excited to be here with you guys.
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Thanks so much for asking me to come on.
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We appreciate it, and we've really been looking forward to this conversation.
0:21
So, Ben, you're an executive coach, and you kind of.
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There's two prongs to your business.
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There's CEO coaching and family office services.
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But neither of those are really your origin story.
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You're clinically trained as a marriage and family therapist.
0:36
So I'd love for you to just kind of walk through a little bit of your career journey, how you ended up in the space you're in, and then maybe share kind of some of the commonalities and differences.
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Because my guess is my wife's also a therapist, that there might be a little more overlap than it meets the eye.
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Yeah, that's right.
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I always say, say, Jared, that no one would ever do on purpose the career that I've done on accident.
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So really, if you rewind my career, I have two major experience sets.
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One, I was licensed marriage and family therapist for six or seven years.
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I was in the counseling industry for almost 10 years total and did around 6,000 hours of therapy.
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And you learn an incredible amount about human behavior and family dynamics and all the things with that kind of experience.
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And then the second half of my experience set was that after counseling, I worked for a handful of businesses this kale really quickly and got to be on the front lines of P&Ls and structures and systems and processes
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and strategy and operations of companies that are growing at a rapid pace and all the change and excitement that comes with that.
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And really, it was the coming together of those two experience sets that put me in a unique position to get into coaching and family office advisory.
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You know, that combined with my mentor, who is now my business partner, a gentleman by the name of Steve Graves, who'd been doing coaching for 25 years, all that sort of came together in a fortunate way for me
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to launch into the CEO coaching space and then ultimately start doing some family office advisory work as well.
2:15
Ben, I love that.
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What would you say when an executive or a family office begins to engage you, what is the big question or problem that they're trying to solve when they reach out to you?
2:25
It can be a handful of different things.
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We've all heard the expression, like, if you've met one family office, you've met one family office, right?
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Like everybody's different as far as, you know, our global portfolio, our assets, our family, our family dynamics, the way we think about investing, non traditional investing, generosity, everything's always different.
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But there are a few things that tend to show up commonly.
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One would be it can be quite challenging for a family to really get their head around what they want their vision as a family to be.
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Like, what is the purpose of the family?
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What are we trying to accomplish with the wealth?
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How do we think about the wealth?
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So vision planning with families is something that we do really often.
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A second would be, you know, the family dynamics bucket.
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For example, right now with a lot of, you know, the older generations of family offices, they tend to think a lot more in the world of traditional investing.
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What we're seeing with a lot of younger generations in family offices is that they are thinking a lot more about non traditional investing.
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Right.
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And so that's a dynamic that we have to learn how to manage in the family and we have to, you know, get, get aligned around how we think about as a family.
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And then obviously there's just, you know, basic relationship stuff that we have to work through in the family dynamics bucket.
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So that's the second thing.
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And then the third thing that I would say, Justin, is I call it broken bone syndrome.
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Like sometimes a family office is just coming to us because they've got something really specific that they've got to solve, they've got to fix.
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They've got the wrong wealth partner in place, they've got the wrong legal structure in place.
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They've got the wrong person driving the ship that, you know, the, the governance structure for the family is no longer working.
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They don't have a plan to, on how they're going to pass down anything other than the wealth.
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Like there's something specific that is a problem that they've got to solve and they're looking for somebody to journey with them for a season to solve that.
4:32
Yeah, I love that.
4:33
It sounds like you Yalls, you're brought in primarily from a reactive point of view.
4:39
Hey, a family office has gotten to the end or they taken their best next step and it's kind of, they're kind of at a crosswords where they need to reevaluate.
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But maybe ideally the best, the best family offices are, are engaging you maybe early on, kind of setting that direction, casting that vision before you really get to that fork in the road and kind of have to do
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some cleanup.
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Resetting of expectations.
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Yeah, for, for sure.
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I mean, I've, I've got a client right now who had over $100 million liquidity event a couple years ago, and they are just now getting their family office structured and in place and starting to think about vision and
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the legacy that they want to create and how they're going to manage generosity and all those things.
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Well, they're coming together at the front end of that, and we're crafting a real vision statement for the family.
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And then we're going to organize our resources around those that vision statement and we're going to manage our partners according to that vision statement.
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So it is for sure good when we can get in on the front end and do that work.
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But a lot of folks are already pretty far down the road and we're going to have to jump into some of the messy stuff.
5:44
Yeah, I love that.
5:45
So you kind of talked about when y' all get involved or when you get involved, I'd love for you to maybe personify the family office or the executive that gets the most value out of their services.
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Maybe it's, hey, I need revenue of X or Y, or maybe it's, hey, actually that doesn't matter.
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I just need values, alignment or anything like that.
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So begin to begin to personify who.
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Who do you do your best work for?
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And, you know, what does it look like for those people that you're working with?
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Yeah.
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So I'll start off by saying this, Jared.
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You know, we, our best family office clients are our clients that really take the idea of stewardship seriously.
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Now, that's a hot buzzword in family office world right now.
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And everybody's saying stewardship, which.
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But our best clients, like, they feel a heavy sense of responsibility with the wealth that they have created or that they have inherited.
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And they, sure, they're going to do a lot of things to create tailwinds in their own life, to create great experiences in their own lives, and to take care of their family for generations to come.
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But they also feel some external responsibility to manage that wealth well.
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And I'm not just talking about generosity.
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I mean, there's a lot of ways that you can steward your wealth well in ways that impact people outside of your family.
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So that's one aspect of our best clients, is that they feel a true sense of responsibility with the wealth.
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Not just blessing, but responsibility.
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And then two other things that I'll just mention quickly.
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One, it's always great when you've got folks that are coachable, that really want some outside perspective and want some fresh ways of thinking about things.
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And two, the quicker we can get to articulating what the challenges are, the better.
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We don't have any interest in signing up family offices that don't need help, that have got everything going right, that are rocking and rolling on down the road.
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But most family offices have some real specific problems that they need to solve.
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And the quicker we can articulate those and align around those, the better.
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Okay, I love that.
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I want to drill into.
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Right.
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I think one of these ideas you're talking about, I think is so important.
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Applying a proper amount of weight to like the reality of, hey, this is a multi generational responsibility that I have.
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And one of the things I think we have seen with the families we work with is there's either maybe a two taking it too lightly of, hey, this is just a, this is just a bucket of money that
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can be spent, or hey, the, the consequences are too high.
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So I'm going to kind of hoard scare almost.
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A scarcity mentality begins to manifest itself.
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I'm curious for you and the families you work with, how do you get them to apply the proper weight?
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Because it is so easy to over index one way or the other.
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Yep, it's a great question, Jared.
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I could talk about just this all day long if you want to.
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We won't.
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There are so many things in business, in leadership, in life and relationships that come down, that comes down to our ability to manage tension well.
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Okay.
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And what you just described is the tension between an abundant mindset and a scarcity mindset.
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Right.
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For me to properly manage that tension well, the very first thing I have to do is I have to identify where my normal level of operating places me on that scale from abundance to scarcity.
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If I'm the guy that's going out there freewheeling, spending more money than I should, and, and we're not protecting our wealth in a way that's wise and we're spending more than we should be and all those things.
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I don't need to be worried about scarcity mindset.
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I need to be worried about abundance mindset.
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And if I'm the guy that's over here that's just building fences around everything and burying my wealth under a rock so that nothing could ever possibly go wrong and nobody's allowed to enjoy it, and I can't bless somebody
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outside the family and I can't create a special event for somebody inside the family because we got to bury everything under the rock, then I need to be worried about the scarcity mindset and I need to not be
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worried about the abundance mindset.
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And so you've got to identify where you fall on that scale and then manage yourself towards the middle of that tension, because that's where we find a healthy place of operating.
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Ben, are there any common denominators for families or family offices that are really doing well in accomplishing their biggest goals and purposes?
10:14
Yes, there are.
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It really, and I don't mean, Justin, to oversimplify my answer here, but it really comes down to the basics, like the blocking and tackling of healthy relationships.
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I mean, this is true in businesses when I work with CEOs, but it's even more true in family offices with where we've got multiple family members involved.
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And so what I mean by that is, do we take the weight and responsibility of communication seriously?
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Do we take the weight and responsibility of clarity seriously?
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Do we know how to do healthy conflict well?
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Do we know how to do appropriate levels of accountability well?
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It's the basic blocking and tackling of relationships that creates the ability for our family office to function well.
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And when those things break down, that's just, you know, the, the results of whatever your family office is trying to accomplish is just a lagging indicator.
11:16
I'm excited to, to get your thoughts on this, but I want to flip the question.
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So what are the common denominators when things are going wrong?
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If there is a family office that's sabotaging their ability to, to kind of steward?
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Well, long term,.
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There can be a handful of different things.
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You know, I'll, I'll take, you know, the idea of, of conflict as just an example.
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Right?
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Anytime we're talking about multiple family members within a family office, we've got loads of relationship that we're bringing into those conversations, and our ability to do conflict well becomes really, really important.
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Using conflict as an example, it's certainly not the only one.
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But using conflict as an example, you know, I've had family offices that were wildly conflict avoidant, right?
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They didn't know how to have hard conversations.
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They didn't know how to speak up when they disagreed about key things.
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We're working backdoor channels to try to manipulate outcomes in our direction instead of having the conversation as a group.
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And so we've got to teach that family how to work well together through hard conversations.
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The opposite is also true.
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I've had families that are addicted to conflict, and they have big, explosive conflict all the time.
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And we have to learn how to say, not every molehill is a mountain.
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We can have some calmer conflict.
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We can let some things go.
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We can learn how to focus on the things that are most important.
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So that's the type of thing that comes up pretty regularly.
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I would also say if your family is truly lacking a vision of the legacy you're trying to build, it becomes really hard to, to do anything in your family office.
13:02
Well, I mean, it was, you know, if you, if you were a well trained pilot and you got in a plane tomorrow and you took the plane off, but you had no idea where you were going, you would
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not do a good job as a pilot.
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Right.
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Like, you just kind of fly around until you ran out of gas and you'd have to land the plane.
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You've, you've got to have a destination in mind.
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You've got to spend some time to really think through, like, what's the legacy we're actively trying to build.
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You know, so many family offices, one of the mistakes they make is the vision that they're, or the legacy that they're creating is just kind of an accidental output of the assets they happen to have and the segmented
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advice of the advisors that they have around them.
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And it just kind of spits out this output that they kind of feel beholden to at some point.
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Instead of really, you know, doing the hard work to craft a vision, figuring out where they want to go as a family, and then aligning all their resources to make that come come true.
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I love that thought, Ben.
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As a financial planner, I've seen it so often where one of the most difficult things to navigate financially for a family is divorce.
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And your background in marriage and family planning and therapy, how have you seen a marriage blowing up in the consequences or effects of that on the family and on the family office.
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Yeah.
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So, I mean, we can unpack the financial implications of that because they are obviously tremendous.
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Right.
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The financial implications of divorce.
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Divorce is extremely expensive.
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Nobody wins from a financial standpoint.
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I actually think everything else happening in a family is more interesting to me.
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But let me, before I get into that, it's probably worth saying the rate of divorce in our country, it has actually been decreasing a little bit in the last few years.
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But no matter how you segment the population, it's basically above 50%.
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Whether we're talking about socioeconomic status, region of the country, churched or unchurched, race, whatever, the divorce rate's basically above 50%.
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And so the very first thing we have to do is we just have to acknowledge the reality of that.
15:23
Right.
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Like if, if, if, you know, you're talking about a family who has three adult children, the odds of Somebody getting divorced is extremely high, right?
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I mean, like the divorce rate's 50%.
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And so we just need to acknowledge the reality of that and not become overly emotional when we say we need to decide how we think about this and how we plan around this.
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So that's one piece.
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The second is one of the questions we ask family, office, clients all the time.
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And an exercise that we'll do with clients is what all are you trying to transfer in addition to the wealth?
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Right.
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Like, everybody thinks about the wealth transfer and you better, it's incredibly important.
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But what else are we trying to transfer in addition to the wealth?
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What characteristics, what virtues, what kind of work ethic, what thoughts about generosity?
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When divorce happens, it becomes extremely difficult to accomplish so many of those things that we're trying to accomplish, all the things that we're trying to transfer in addition to the wealth, it just creates tension, it creates disconnection, it
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creates all sorts of challenges.
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And again, look, I mean, none of us are immune to this.
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Like, the great couples, great individuals get divorced all the time.
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Like it's just a reality of life.
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And so we need to recognize how possible it is to happen to our family.
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And then we also need to recognize how expensive it is if it happens.
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And then the third piece is just, it becomes really difficult to accomplish a lot of those big dreams we have outside of the wealth transfer itself when divorce, you know, jumps into our family.
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I love that.
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And you know, it's one of those things where you have to build infrastructure with kind of the end in mind.
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Right?
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Like, like you talked about, hey, you know, patriarch and matriarch might have a very solid relationship, but my kids, I have kids and my kids are going to have kids.
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And if the statistics are there, the probabilities are there.
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So like, you know, it's tough because you need to need to embed some source of hope and truth, but also kind of infrastructure that how are we going to deal with this if and when it happens?
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Ben, I would love for you to kind of talk about, you know, build.
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As we talk about building infrastructure.
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What is kind of how do you interface with multiple generations?
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Right?
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Because it's interesting, you know, if I'm thinking about legacy and multi generational legacy, to what extent, you know, if major and patriarch are only the only people in the room, my guess is the probability of that legacy enduring
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for generations is shorter.
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So I'd love for you to just talk about, hey, to what extent are you engaging multiple generations?
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And maybe what, and what generation is usually the one that Brings you on and how do you kind of think about your role when there's multiple stakeholders, maybe even within the family?
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Yeah.
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So what generation typically brings me on?
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A lot of times I'm receiving a phone call from a couple in their 50s or 60s, their children are now young adults, and they're starting to have their most serious conversations ever about wealth and the transfer of wealth.
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And a lot of times those moms and dads are just going like, I need some help to get us moving in the right direction here.
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Going back to the other part of your question, I think one of the most interesting questions for somebody who's leaning into that family office space and maybe really trying to build out the infrastructure of their family office, one
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of the most interesting questions for them to ask and answer is how much do we want the different generations to overlap in their non personal, non family time?
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And so what I mean by that is, you know, as a family, hopefully we're always going to have this family time, right?
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Like our annual family vacation, Christmas, Thanksgiving, whatever, whatever those rhythms and routines that we have as a family are, we're always going to have that time.
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So I'm setting that aside and I'm not talking about that for a second, but what I'm asking is within the context of the family office, whether that's an operating business or a generosity vehicle that we create, or we
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decide that we want to have a private investment fund and we're going to invest in a few companies, how much of that work do we want to do together?
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Do we want to go build something together or do we want to create a vehicle where we can each go out and kind of live our own more independent lives.
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That's a really important question for folks to ask and to answer.
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And you really can design for either.
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Both can be, you know, anything on that spectrum can be a great answer for a family.
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But I would challenge families to really think deeply about, like, what gives us the best chance of, of accomplishing our desired legacy long term.
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If you're a family that has pretty volatile conflict all the time, we probably don't need to go run an operating company together.
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Right.
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It might be good to think of a more segmented design of what we're trying to build as a family office.
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But if you're a family that works really, really well together and wants to crazy passionate about building things together, great, let's go do that hard work of building stuff together.
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So I think that part's really interesting and all of that points back to your question.
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Like who's in the room?
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How often are people in the room?
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A lot of it depends on what we're trying to build and how necessary is the involvement of each generation.
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I'll say one more thing.
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I know I'm yapping a little bit here.
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Sorry, you guys get me worked up.
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I told you I can talk about this all day long because I love it.
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One of the other challenges we're seeing pretty often right now is G2, generation two.
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If we're talking about young adults in their 20s and 30s, there's a lot of those folks that don't want to participate in a family office, or at least not at the level that mom and dad are hoping they
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will participate.
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And so generation two engagement, or a young adult generation engagement, is a question that we're hearing a lot from that older generation who's.
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Who's really starting to feel the weight of the transfer of wealth.
21:53
Ben, I'm really struck by something you said there.
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I think it's easy or it's almost a temptation when you start to have these discussions.
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There's a little bit of a temptation to think that I have to create a family office that solves the stewardship problem in perpetuity for the next four generations.
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And you know, your idea of, well, hey, maybe your family should not be in an operating company together for the next several generations.
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Maybe it should be a little bit segmented.
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I actually think there's an incredible amount of wisdom that if you want to steward things, well, that is the smartest path.
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And some things can be accomplished on a stewardship level, which is such a broad term that can mean 10 different things.
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Some things can be solved inside of the family office.
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And then there's other things with stewardship.
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Just like Paul Gregory, who we had on the podcast a few weeks ago, he.
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He said there's other things that just need to be solved through parenting and through the parent child relationship.
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And it's interesting to think that the family office doesn't necessarily have to be a vehicle that solves every One of these 10 facets of stewardship all on its own, all inside of the legal entity.
23:06
Yeah, no doubt about it.
23:08
I agree with that 100%, Justin.
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The family office cannot, will not, and should not try to solve everything.
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I also think it's interesting.
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I'm thinking about two of my clients right now.
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One of them, they are actively building something new together.
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G1 and G2, G2 spouses, they are coming together and they've got a big vision for something they're trying to build together.
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I've got another family office right now that we refer to as a launchpad family office.
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They are trying to create a vehicle for each member of G2 to go out and launch with some tailwinds aided by, you know, the financial resources of the family, the network of the family, and some of the character,
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virtue things of the family where they can launch into their own independent lives.
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Well, with the connectivity of the family office behind it.
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So you can design for anything.
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You just can't design for everything.
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And intentionally designing for what works for your family is what's most important.
24:05
Yeah, I mean, I feel like that's why this coaching is so important because it get back, gets back to the point you said where if you've seen one family office, you've seen one family office.
24:12
Right.
24:12
So it's like, it's really, you know, you can't tell somebody what to do, getting back to where you're going unless you know exactly what they're solving for.
24:19
Ben, I'm curious.
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How do you, you know, how do you navigate this?
24:22
Like as I think about this, I picture, you know, a family office with multiple generations, external stakeholders, accountants, CPAs, attorneys, advisors.
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Right.
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And then you come in.
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How do you, you know, how do you kind of make sense of this and create continuity just versus being, you know, another, another voice in the room that's pulling the family in a different direction.
24:44
How do you kind of ensure alignment when there's so many different stakeholders and opinions maybe in, in that room?
24:50
Yeah, well, first of all, you know, I hope for any family office advisor this would go without saying, but we work really, really hard to be great partners with the other experts that are in the room with the
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family.
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And, and so that's a non negotiable for me.
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If I got involved with a family and they had bad partners in the room, that just wouldn't be interesting to me.
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And so we work really, really hard.
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We get to work with some, just incredibly intelligent, creative attorneys with some great folks on the wealth management, wealth strategy side.
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And so you gotta be a good partner.
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And if you're not willing to play ball well with others, that's a major problem.
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You know, we do what we call vision discovery work with clients.
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I believe my job is not to dictate what the vision for someone's family office ought to be, but my job is to come alongside them and help them, help pull out of them the vision that already exists within
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the DNA and the fabric of their family.
25:50
It's already there.
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We've Just got to pull it out, distill it down to what's most important, clarify it, sequence it, get it packaged up and ready to go out.
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And when you do that, you don't come in and offend other partners that are at the table because you're just coming in.
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And when you communicate that vision back to them, if they've been working with the family for five years, they're going to be like, yeah, that feels like this family.
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You helped them find their words for the vision they've been trying to build all along.
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And now it's clarified, packaged up and ready to go.
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So that's a key part as well, is just really coming in as the family advisor going, it's not my job to tell you I think you ought to go build this or operate like this.
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It's to help pull out of you that vision that already exists within the fabric of your family.
26:36
I love that.
26:37
Ben, how does a family engage with you?
26:40
Meaning is it kind of a perpetual engagement?
26:43
Is it for a season?
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What does the cadence look like?
26:46
How does a family or a family office engage with you?
26:49
Yeah, so almost every client that I work with is for a season.
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There are a few that we journey with for a long time, but those are really unique circumstances where there's just because of what we're building or the role that we play, there's a long term role for us.
27:12
By and large, the majority of our work with clients is for a season to help them really figure out what's broken, what's missing, what's wrong.
27:26
Actually, I'll describe it like this, to figure out exactly where we are in the current state, exactly where we're going to go in the future state, and then the roadmap to get there.
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I mean, that's what we're doing with 90% of our clients.
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So we diagnose where we are today, we do the hard work to cast some vision for where we're heading in the future.
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We build the roadmap to get there, maybe help them kick off that roadmap, maybe walk part of that roadmap with them.
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But if we do a really, really good job with 75 to 80% of our clients, we should be ending the engagement after 12, 18 or 24 months because we've created enough momentum in action that the family is prepared
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to launch forward after that.
28:06
And then maybe we hang around in some sort of semiannual role or something like that afterwards.
28:13
But we're not trying to create evergreen clients.
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We're trying to come in Drive great value for folks and then launch them back out on their way.
28:24
I love that.
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I'm curious for you, right?
28:26
Like, I love, I love the idea of, hey, vision isn't something I have to create.
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It's something that already exists within me and I gotta, I gotta pull it out.
28:34
Since y' all are just there.
28:36
Since you're there for a season, how do you kind of.
28:39
There was this verbiage on this website, on your website that I love.
28:41
You said formation over epiphanies, right?
28:44
You know, a lot of times with kind of some of the vision casting, more strategic level work, it's really easy to come maybe at the end of this, hey, I come some core values.
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I have some words that kind of describe what we're getting at.
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How do you make sure that that manifests and really impacts the day to day, right?
28:58
Like, it's easy to look at, hey, here's my vision statement as a family.
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Then how do you have it be as granular and practical, as tactical as, hey, I had these two investments come across my desk, A or B, and then using kind of the vision work to do that.
29:11
I'm more just asking, how do you make sure the vision actually penetrates the day to day of decision making, just versus being some strategic thing that sits on the wall and.
29:19
Sounds good.
29:20
A couple things.
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One, it's probably worth noting that a vision statement doesn't have to be permanent and forever, right?
29:29
Like we should, as life changes, as relationships change, particularly if we're talking about some vision that involves some young adults in our family as their passions and purpose change, we should allow for that.
29:43
So with that caveat out of the way with, you know, if epiphanies, if information were enough to help people create change, we would live in the most healthy, robust, clear, calm moment in the history of the world, right?
30:04
Because there's more information than ever, right?
30:06
Like no point in human history has anyone had anywhere close to the amount of information that we carry around in our pockets all day long on a cell phone, right?
30:17
Like, like it's crazy.
30:19
So that's why we say we're in the formation business, not the epiphany business, is because if epiphanies were all people needed, no one would ever hire a CEO, coach or a family office advisor.
30:29
They would just go into the, into Google and say, you know, help me solve this.
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Or they'd pull up Claude and say, help me solve this, and that would be it.
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And it'd be over.
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What formation is?
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Formation is the hard work of Staying with the right plan, the right content month over month for a season and watching it shape and turn things as we go.
30:51
We say all the time we bring useful strategy, we bring thought partnership, we bring energizing hope, we bring measured accountability and we bring outside perspective to our clients.
31:03
And when you do that, when you do those five things month over month, over the course of engagement, and it creates that formative change for people.
31:13
I'm thinking of a client right now, a 35 year old member of one of my family offices that I work with.
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He's a G4 of a fairly large family, plays an important role in the family office.
31:25
We did some vision discovery work about six months ago and recently he was talking about some of the decisions that they're making that are going to impact G5.
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And I could tell the way he was thinking about it was not anchored in some of those vision ideas.
31:42
And so I brought that back in front of him and said we either need to change the vision or you need to change your approach to this problem because it's not in line with this vision.
31:51
That's formation.
31:53
Right.
31:56
He knew what the vision was and he knew what the decision was, but he needed that formative process that comes from outside perspective of being brought back into that month after month, month over month in a way that
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creates that formative change over time.
32:09
Ben, I, I want to have Jared, you know, ask our closing question because I'm fascinated to get your thoughts on it.
32:15
But before we go there, where I think a lot of our listeners, you know, are going to resonate with this and want to know if, if they want to engage with you or follow your work, where can they
32:25
do that?
32:26
Yeah, the easiest way is ben cashin.com very fancy website that I, or, or domain anyway that I grabbed there.
32:34
But you can go to Ben Cashin dot com.
32:36
There's a form you can fill out if you want to get in touch and, and we can chat.
32:41
I'd be happy to do that.
32:43
I post a little bit of content to LinkedIn as well, but, but, but not a ton.
32:48
Obviously.
32:49
Most of the work that I'm doing is highly confidential and I have to codify stories and change, you know, aspects and things like that to protect the confidentiality of my clients, which I take really, really serious.
33:01
But yeah, bencashing.com is the best place to go and shoot me a note and I'd be happy to reach out.
33:07
Awesome.
33:08
And we'll be sure to link to all those resources that you mentioned in the show notes.
33:13
Ben, our Final question is kind of one we're asking all of our guests.
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So, you know, a lot of people, you know, when they start the legacy journey, they think about infrastructure, right?
33:22
And they just, they start, start on the tools and the methods and all that stuff.
33:26
But I think really, you know, kind of in addition to the vision conversation, you kind of have to ask some more existential questions first about where are you going versus, you know, versus what, what tools and systems do
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I do I use?
33:38
So for you, anyone, you know, as you're thinking about a family or potentially advising a family that's beginning to think through and plan around legacy, what's one question that they need to ask themselves and answer honestly before going
33:52
on the journey of, of building this infra and trying to build a multi generational legacy?
33:56
Okay, I'm going to do my best to answer your question.
33:58
I've got a couple different directions I want to take it.
34:01
I think number one, Jared is just.
34:05
It is incredibly difficult to actually be able to see and articulate the future state that you want to create.
34:15
Right?
34:15
Like most people can articulate their present state with some degree of clarity.
34:22
Not a lot of people can, can describe the future state that they're trying to, trying to create with much clarity.
34:28
And so, you know, not to beat a dead horse here, but it's just so uniquely important for family offices that they don't fall into the trap of just kind of these, these accidental, haphazard outcomes that come along from
34:44
taking some wealth management strategy, taking some legal strategy, and given to whatever nonprofits happen to knock on the door and ask for money.
34:52
We need to do the hard work of really crafting the vision of what we're trying to create, the future state of what we're trying to create, and then making sure we've got the roadmap and the right people in
35:04
the right seats doing the right work to get us from present state to future state.
35:09
And so that's the first thing I'd say.
35:15
And then maybe it's a double click into that.
35:17
But having the right people in place on your team is wildly important.
35:24
The reality is, a lot of times the people that were right for the last season may or may not be right for the next season.
35:30
So just making sure you're evaluating that.
35:34
And then something that I alluded to earlier that I get really excited about with clients is just that really digging into that identification process of what all are we trying to accomplish in addition to the transfer of wealth?
35:47
And I have a client right now where work ethic is the number one thing he wants to transfer in addition to the wealth.
35:56
And so so much of what we're doing is geared around making sure that work ethic is transferred down through generations, despite the fact that generational wealth is hopefully going to always be there.
36:08
And so answering that question, really getting serious about what we're trying to transfer in addition to the wealth is really, really important as well.
36:15
Man, I love that.
36:16
So good.
36:17
Ben, you are a fountain of wisdom and we appreciate you and the work you're doing.
36:23
And thank you for sharing just a little bit of your wisdom with our audience.
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We'll be sure to link to the resources mentioned and love to hear what our listeners think.
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Like subscribe Share ideas for future episodes podcasts@brownlingwealthmanagement.com thanks.
36:36
We'll see you next.
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