This week, I am delighted to welcome Scott Saslow, Founder and CEO of Palo Alto, CA-based ONE WORLD Investments Inc., which provides investment capital and advisory services to help organizations scale social impact. Over his career, Scott has been a founder or founding team member of seven start-up businesses. Prior to ONE WORLD, Scott was the Founder & CEO of The Institute of Executive Development, supporting executives in Global 2000 organizations including American Express, Blackrock, Intel, Time Warner, and the US Navy, and earlier in his career, he worked at Siebel Systems and Microsoft Corporation in leadership roles. Scott has authored over twenty-five articles for publications such as Forbes and Directorship and has been interviewed by and quoted in Harvard Business Review, Bloomberg and BusinessWeek.

Scott expounds on the concept of “sustainability” as it pertains to a family office, and he provides his definition of a sustainable family office and explains why sustainability is important in this context. Having emphasized how important this objective is for the family, Scott then talks about how families and family offices pursue sustainability and how they prepare for it and how they achieve it. He outlines the many dimensions and ways to make a family office sustainable.

Scott is just about to release his new book Building a Sustainable Family Office, which is an excellent, and to some extent, autobiographical, compendium of everything families need to know or consider as they create or take over a family office. The book is organized around and culminates in the definition of what Scott refers to as “the five key elements of success.” Scott gives us a sneak peek into what the five elements are and how each of them contributes to the long-term success of the family and its family office.

Sustainability is also often referred to as an investment philosophy and a values system. Scott shares his views about how families can connect their aspiration for sustainable investing with their effort to build and operate a sustainable family office.

Don’t miss this insights-packed conversation with a rising-gen owner of a family enterprise, a successful entrepreneur and wealth creator, and a proponent of family sustainability and positive impact.

Today, it is my pleasure and honor to speak with Prof. Maarten de Groot, Endowed Chair of Resilient Family Businesses & Enterprise Families at VU Amsterdam School of Business and Economics. Prior to completing his PhD at VU Amsterdam in 2021, Maarten had a long and distinguished career in wealth management. He co-founded and ran one of Europe’s largest and most innovative multi-family offices, VermogensGroep, which was acquired by UBS in 2008, and later he was Executive Chairman of Eligius, the single-family office of the Goldschmeding family in the Netherlands.

Maarten was knighted by the King of the Netherlands for his contributions to society, and is the recipient of multiple prestigious awards, including the 2022 Sustainable Investments Award, the 2023 Business Impact Award, and the 2023 VU Crowds Award. He is the founder and director of the VU Center for Enterprise Family Research and is the program director of the Responsible Ownership for Enterprise Families (ROEF) executive education program at VU Amsterdam, which was created and run in partnership with FOX.

Maarten has studied and worked with multigenerational families for decades and has identified many of the key topics and priorities that successful families focus on. He shares some of the most important factors and themes that define and propel families’ journeys through time and across generations.

Possibly the most universal topic that is relevant to all families across the globe and throughout time is preparing the next generation for the future stages of the family journey. Maarten talks about how he sees the importance and centrality of engaging and preparing the rising gen to play a meaningful role in their family enterprise.

One important practical suggestion Maarten has for families, and especially for the younger members of the rising gen, is to understand and develop their relationship with wealth. He highlights some of the key challenges rising gen members face and what they can do to overcome them in order to see their role as wealth owners in a positive and healthy way.

Maarten spearheaded the development of the ROEF Academy (Responsible Ownership for Enterprise Families) program – an innovative, world-class educational program, designed jointly by VU Amsterdam and FOX. We just successfully concluded our first year and graduated the first cohort of young next-gen family members. Maarten offers an overview of the ROEF program, its mission and design, and how it helps rising gen owners identify and prepare for their role in the family enterprise.

Do not miss this deeply insightful conversation with one of the most distinguished thought leaders in the multigenerational family wealth space. Maarten is a celebrated academic researcher and educator, a successful entrepreneur and family office executive, and a globally recognized practitioner and advisor to many enterprise families across the globe.

Today, I am pleased to welcome Michael Whelchel, Founder and CEO of Big Path Capital, a boutique investment bank working with positive impact companies and funds and pursuing a mission to challenge the status quo and raise the expectations of capitalism. Prior to founding Big Path, Micheal had 15-year career in private equity holding leadership positions at several firms, including Morris Capital Management and Stony Point Group.

We start by discussing the big idea behind Michael’s work – what he calls “leveraging capitalism”. Michael explains what that means, elaborating on the challenges and the opportunities he sees with how capitalism operates today and how it could or should operate.

Michael founded Big Path Capital to advance this vision for the future of capitalism. He talks about how his firm differs from other investment intermediaries, how he sees his purpose and mission in the marketplace, and what he is doing to advance this mission and achieve his vision for capitalism.

For families, family offices, and other private capital investors in the marketplace who are interested in embracing impact investing as a superior way of deploying capital, Michael offers a number of practical tips to get them started on the right path. He also describes how families can get engaged in this mission by attending the annual Impact Capitalism Summit he and his firm host in Nantucket each year. Michael shares an overview of this unique event and provides suggestions for how family members and family offices who are active investors can get involved, contribute to, and benefit from this gathering.

Enjoy this informative conversation with one of the most active and innovative champions of impact capitalism in the private capital space.

Today, I’m excited to welcome Amjed Saffarini, co-founder and CEO of Trove, a fast-growing, innovative firm which provides a broad array of family office services, including operations outsourcing, lifestyle management, business and tax advisory. Prior to Trove, Amjed was President at Kaplan, the leading global educational services company, and co-founder and CEO of CyberVista, a cybersecurity education company that was spun out of Kaplan and was acquired by N2K Networks. Amjed is also a Board Leadership Fellow at the National Association of Corporate Directors.

There is a popular (and controversial) adage in our industry that goes: “If you’ve seen one family office, you’ve seen one family office.” Amjed is in the camp of people who believe this adage is an unhelpful fallacy. He explains why and shares his views on the “common DNA” that family offices share.

But even with 95%+ shared DNA, all families are unique, which means they face the conundrum to either allow complexity to grow exponentially as they try to customize their family office to their needs or settle for standardized, off-the-shelf, or outsourced solutions that might not be perfectly tailored to the family but are good enough to get the job done. Amjed advises how families should think about this conundrum and how they can decide on the design to build and resource their family office.

Amjed then delves into the practical suggestions he has for families, starting with the areas of the family enterprise and the family office where he believes families should not “reinvent the wheel” but rather would be advised to explore standardized or outsourced services. Conversely, he talks about when it is appropriate to invest in internalizing the complexity and to bring a family office service or functional department in house.

This is an illuminating and thought-provoking conversation with one of the most innovative thinkers and entrepreneurs reshaping the family office space.

Today, I am pleased to welcome Matt Tobin, President and Chief Operating Officer for South Dakota Trust Company (SDTC) and President of SDTC Services. SDTC Services provides consulting and corporate services to the non-depository trust company industry, and as President, Matt is primarily responsible for managing the Company’s Private and Public Trust Company client relationships. He serves as a board director and committee member for several private and public trust companies, is member of the Board of Managers for SDTC, and Board of Directors member for the South Dakota Trust Association.

Matt is the author of many influential publications on Private Trust Companies and has delivered numerous speeches and presentations on the topic, including at the Purposeful Planning Symposium, the Heckerling Institute on Estate Planning, Georgetown Law Center, and the Jackson Hole Financial Professionals’ Symposium, to mention just a few. He is also a frequent speaker at FOX forums, webcasts, and workshops, and is guest faculty at the highly popular FOX Private Trust Company Workshop.

The focus of today’s conversation is on Private Trist Companies (PTCs) as a legal construct to organize and administer multigenerational family assets and professionalize the governance of complex enterprise families. Matt covers basics, including what is a PTC; why were PTCs created; and how they function? He then describes how enterprise families are using PTCs today and explains why they are becoming more and more popular. He goes over the use cases and challenges PTCs can help address for multigenerational families.

For families who are exploring the topic and thinking about utilizing a PTC, Matt offers some valuable practical tips and suggestions that can help them avoid common pitfalls and make the process of researching or establishing a PTC a smooth one. He also provides many pointers and tips for families who already have a PTC to help them ensure they are making the most of this investment and the structures and tools it provides.

Do not miss this rich and informative conversation with one of the foremost experts on Private Trust Companies in our industry.

I am delighted to welcome Buddy Thomas, Founder and President of Superior Planning | Family Office, a Southern California firm serving HNW and UHNW families since 1982. Buddy has created more than 50 individual virtual family offices, providing family fiduciaries, family members, and their most trusted advisors with what they need to collaborate and make decisions together. He is the author of four books, over fifty published articles, and the producer of more than 200 videos including, the “Fifty-Five Second Family Fiduciary” and “Secrets of a Family Fiduciary” series.

In his work with enterprising families, Buddy team developed a concept he calls “the three essential elements”. He describes this concept and how he puts it to work when he advises wealthy families. As with any creative conceptual framework, the key question and the real test is how it gets applied in real-life situations. Buddy paints a detailed picture of how he and his team do wealth planning with families that encompasses all three essential elements and talks about the planning process they have created that achieves the appropriate balance between left- and right-brain topics and priorities.

Buddy and his firm are known for at least one practical tool they apply successfully with families – a tool that they even named their firm after, the Superplan. Buddy defines what the Superplan is and outlines how it works and how families can benefit from it. Taking his methodology to the next level, Buddy and his firm have now developed a Family Wealth Game as a modern tool to help families engage in the planning process together and are even building this game into a software application. He shares the vision and workings of this game, describes what it adds to the wealth advisory process, and illustrates the experience it delivers to enterprising families.

Please enjoy this insightful conversation with a thoughtful and creative veteran of the family wealth advisory profession and a member of a multigenerational enterprising family.

Today, I have the pleasure of speaking with Jamie McLaughlin, Founder and CEO of J. H. McLaughlin & Co., a management consulting firm focused on strategy and practice management for wealth management and investment advisory firms, private banks, trust companies, single- and multi-family offices. Previously, he was CEO of Geller Family Office Services, a partner at Convergent Wealth Advisors where he built the firm’s New York office, the regional president of Mellon Private Wealth Management’s New York region, and a financial advisor at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. Jamie is a Co-Founder of the UHNW Institute, an independent “think tank” serving firms that serve the ultra-high-net-worth client segment and their advisors.

Jamie has enjoyed a long and decorated career in the wealth management and family office space, and being a history major, he has also written many excellent works on the history of the family wealth and family office industry. He tells the story, as he witnessed it, of how we the industry evolved over the past 30-40 years and paints an elaborate picture of our current industry landscape.

The family office field is enjoying unprecedented growth, and with that growth come different business and service models and a variety of advisory frameworks and practices. Jamie describes the different types of firms that exist today in the UHNW wealth management and family office space, comparing their origins and unique characteristics and analyzing the pros and cons of each model.

Given the spectrum of wealth management models that have emerged in the UHNW segment of our industry, Jamie offers his advice for firms who are looking to establish their place in the space or to solidify their position and ensure the long-term sustainability and profitability of their wealth management and family office business. He also provides valuable practical tips for UHNW clients and enterprise families looking to make sense of the fast-evolving wealth management landscape that serves them and to choose among the different kinds of wealth advisors and family office service providers out there.

Don’t miss this in-depth conversation with one of the most experienced and respected thought leaders in the UHNW wealth management field.

Today, I am delighted to welcome Joe Reilly, CEO and Founder of Circulus Group. Joe is the host of two popular and influential podcasts in the family office and family wealth space: the Private Capital Podcast and the Inheritance Podcast. He is a longtime strategy consultant and family office expert, specializing in advising asset and wealth managers on their allocations, technology, and operations. Joe was the co-founder and founding president of the Family Office Association, and he is currently a director of The Inheritance Project, a non-profit that shares stories of inheritors.

As one of the leaders of The Inheritance Project, which is dedicated to telling the stories of wealth inheritors and exploring the emotional and social impact of wealth, Joe talks about the purpose and motivations behind this undertaking. Based on conversations with inheritors and his work with families of wealth, he provides a glimpse into the most dominant themes he encounters – the top issues, challenges, or opportunities that emerge from speaking with these wealth owners.

Joe offers a set of practical suggestions and advice for wealth owners and family members extracted from the different family stories he has encountered over the years, listing some useful tools and frameworks he has seen being successfully utilized by family leaders and family members. He also delves into the role of the advisors serving the family and shares some of the success stories and highly effective methods, tools, and tactics best-in-class family wealth advisors apply in their work with multigenerational families and wealth inheritors.

Please enjoy this highly informative conversation with one of the long-time thought leaders and practitioners in the private capital and family wealth space.