How to Turn Family Wealth Into Legacy Using Shared Values & Structure | The Family Biz Show Ep. 121

Transcript

Michael (00:00.184)

Well, Welcome everybody to the Family Biz Show. I'm your host, Michael Palumbos with Family Wealth and Legacy in Rochester, New York. Thank you for joining us today. We have Shawn Barberis from More Than Money 360 here today. Very, very excited to have you on the show. Again, Shawn, super excited, welcome. 

 

Shawn:

Appreciate it. 

 

Michael:

Of course. So I don't have a lot of guests on a second time. So I just want to share with people, the audience why I've asked Shawn to come back on. Long story short, know, the family wealth and legacy, our company is going to start utilizing the more than money 360 services with our clients. It's been years and years that, you know, my core purpose, our firm's core purpose has always been to strengthen families as well as the wealth and legacy. And when we talk about wealth, obviously, we're talking about all forms of wealth, not just the financial wealth, but that first one is the strength in the family. And I've done that through years with books or here read this or check this out. And Shawn and I have known each other, but the firm that I used to work with, you know, didn't allow us to utilize the services at the time. The new firm is, you know, we do use them. So we're really excited that, you know, you are on our reducing legacy risk.

 

You know, part of the Flywheel, you know, we have the family business Flywheel that we talk about with our clients and that, you know, when I'm turning that Flywheel to keep things moving, I want to talk about legacy risk and I want to talk about all of the things that More Than Money 360 brings to the table. So I'm really excited about sharing this in a way more in-depth, you know, interview with you today than we've done in the past. Would you mind just take a step back and just kind of talk about your journey again. How did you end up doing this? You've been spending 15 years now, but before that, what were you doing? What led to where you are today? And talk about some of the, you you've got some enhancements coming out with your software that's really good and you've won some awards. Kind of give us an update of all the things that have happened through the years. But again, how did Shawn get to even thinking about family and legacy and all of these things that are more than money?

 

Shawn (02:23.448)

Thank you, Michael. First and foremost, it's great to be with you today and thank you for having me again. I will say as a firm, we're thrilled to have you all joining us and being officially part of the More Than Money family. So thank you and better days are ahead and I'm looking forward to that. So the More Than Money journey has been exactly that. It has been a journey. Take you all the way back and we'll go back to 2000 and my wife and I are both attorneys by profession.

 

We passed the bar exam in 2000. I hung up my own shingle, law office of Shawn T. Barberis, and I started drafting documents for a lot of successful business owners. And almost from the outset in 2000, I started to get questions wrapped around, hey Shawn, how do I prepare little Sally for this money? Hey Shawn, how do I get my kids to communicate on this? Shawn, you what happens if I just take all my money and split it X number of ways among my X number of children? You know, how does that work historically? And I always encourage families to not do that to take a more values-based approach. And so that led to lot of conversations around disincentivizing heirs, certainly letting them think that wealth is their identity and having that negative impact that our industry has talked at Nausium about, unfortunately. And so as I continued to dig deeper into it, I very quickly realized that as a practicing attorney, there was no document that was going to address these qualitative concerns. And that I was... ill-equipped and quite frankly not equipped at all to be able to help the wealthiest families in the country work towards towards a commonality with the rising generation of shared purpose vision values. So I actually stopped practicing law in 2006 and moved in and started the technology company that now owns more than money 360 in 2007. So this is my 18th year officially of working in the family meeting facilitation industry. And so that that took me into the industry in that

 

I'm getting asked these questions. I don't know how to answer them. How can I best help my clients? And when I then moved into the family, foreign facilitation industry, I hired researchers. What are the most successful families doing over three generations or a hundred years? What do they all have in common? What are the families that didn't succeed? What did they have in common? I mean, almost learning what not to do is almost as valuable in life sometimes as learning what to do.

 

Shawn (04:44.398)

So I wanted to learn both sides of the ledgers. Lots of research that went on for an extended period of time. I also had them, I would say, my researchers to research the legacy governance industry. What's good about it? What's bad about it? What could be done better? And that led me to the conclusion of creating a real process around the best practices of becoming what our industry calls a generative family, succeeding over three generations or a hundred years and building a system around that. I was very blessed in...the late 2000s and early 2010s, I was able to spend a lot of time with Roy Williams, God rest his soul. And I sent my marketing people out to the Institute for preparing errors. And I would meet with Roy once a month. And if he said it to me once, Michael, he said it to me a hundred times, Shawn, legacy is often discussed yet rarely acted upon. Ask yourself why. And I kept saying lack of system process structure, right Roy? He's like, yeah, he's saying I'm too old to change my stripes. But you know, that's where the industry needs to go. And that's why we coined the term fam tech. We've heard fin tech at Nauseum.

 

Money is important. No one is ever saying it's not. What we're also saying is that the qualitative side is equally as important. And that's why we've service marked and really pushed this fam tech notion of creating technology to build even better families than they are today. Because the family is already great. But how can we make them even better? Because they do face, as you know, better than anybody. Successful families face a unique subset of challenges.

Michael:

And oftentimes they don't even know that they're facing those challenges and what those those challenges are. So, you know, the world that you live in and that we talk about is educating families about, you know, these challenges and risks that they don't even know about at this point.

 

Shawn:

And that's why we've always taken what we refer to as an education-based marketing approach. We use research and all the great research from all the great researchers in our industry. And there's many, we don't need to name all their names, they're outstanding. And so we share that research to paint the picture. We let the research paint the picture as to here's what happens when you address the qualitative, here's what happens when you don't. And so we built system process and structure through research.

 

Shawn (06:50.83)

And we went to market late 2009, early 2010. And it was a paper based platform. And the older generations said, Shawn, where have you been all my life? The younger generations, I don't think they've stopped. I don't think they've stopped laughing at me yet. Paper? You want me to do something on paper? So that's when we went and we started to build the first version of More Than Money 360. As you well know, we just now launched the seventh version of More Than Money 360. As you mentioned, for the first time last year, we were nominated for the Family Wealth Report, you asked about awards. We were nominated for innovative client-facing technology and we won that. This year we're actually nominated for five categories. The awards banquet I think is up at the Mandarin Oriental next week, May 8th or two weeks from now, whatever it may be. So we'll see how we do this year. But last year nominated for two one one and this year nominated for five and fingers crossed. Congratulations. Congratulations. a team effort and that's really what all this is about. This is a movement

 

This is a qualitative move in the quantitative world. And when I started in 07, I got laughed out of the room by a lot of people. Shawn, people don't want this. Shawn, can't build a business around this. And so I heard that a lot from 07 to about 2015, and the tide started to change. And then the good Lord brought me my partner, Rowy Diefendorf, who's G4 of his family that started their family business in 1875.

 

Michael:
Yes.

 

Shawn (08:18.89)

And that's when he said to me, Shawn, what you're building is a great personal practice. But if we want to change the world, this is bigger than us. We got to build this into a business and get the Michael Palumbos, the folks that believe in the qualitative side and give them the system structure and process to build these multi-generational relationships, bring in the assets, but certainly help the family prepare for what are some of the unique complexities of being a wealthy family. So apologies if that was a tad too long.

 

Michael:

perfect.

 

I think what's important about that is for people to understand why this was important to me as well. think that helps to give some context is that, you 25 years as a family wealth advisor serving high net worth and ultra high net worth family owned businesses.

 

I've seen lots of experiences where things didn't go right and where siblings aren't talking any longer, where, you know, parents and siblings are frustrated with one another, where the estate plan that we put together gets blown up the moment mom and dad, you know, are gone because there wasn't communication, you know, that happened between the generations. And so that was, you know, that was the why.

 

Michael (09:34.958)

This has always been so important to me. I knew it was one of the levers that needed to be turned. I knew people needed to be talking about this. They needed to be exposed to the risk. But like I said, I am a creature of systems and processes. I love systems and processes. And when I didn't have a system or process to be able to walk people through it, if I had to invent it myself, I wasn't gonna do it. And so we believe that all three levers that family business Flywheel is, you know, we need to focus on the business, we need to grow it, we need strategy, and we need that the wealth, you know, be focused on, we need the coordination gaps and the opportunities that are being looked at because, you know, there's not one person looking at them. And the family has to be talked about and we have to be growing these things. And if you don't focus on all three of them and how they're intertwined - the family, the business and the wealth is just mind blowing today. And so how could you, how could you, you know, just, if you only focus on the business and forget about focus on the family, it's eventually the wheels are going to fall off the wagon.

 

Shawn:

Well, for the family and for you as a practitioner, are going to fall off. mean, the wheels are going to fall off both vehicles.

 

Michael (10:51.886)

 

100 %

 

Let's talk about, you don't mind, of the data, some of the research, what were some of the things that were eye-popping for you as you were going down this road and made it so easy for you to say, yes, we have to be educating people around these things? Yeah.

 

Shawn:

One of things that really kicked me in the shin, a few things did, but one that really kicked me in the shin is when we asked the rising generations, what is the one thing you would not tell mom, dad, grandma, grandpa, whatever the particular structure is? 93%, that's a big number. 93 % of the rising generation came back and said that they felt dictated to, they didn't have a voice. So we have… focused very acutely on empowering the rising generation as part of our process. We wrote an article for Camden Wealth, how to speak rising gen, right? Well, the rising generations are driven by purposeful positive impact. They're also very smart and they're opinionated and they want their voice to be heard. And when you don't allow their voice to be heard, bad things happen and we can dive into those, right? And then finally, you need to speak their language, which is technology. When their eyes open, Facebook existed. I'm 52 years old. That wasn't the case. We had phone books back

 

I was born in the phone books and rabbit ears on my TV, right? That's what I had. know, times have changed quite a bit. When this generation, when the rising generation woke up, they had all these technologies. So you have to speak their language. And I hear often from those in our industries, you know, we just having a hard time getting the rising generation engaged. And so we wanted to build a customizable, scalable system process and structure for as many advisors that are believers of the importance of the qualitative side of wealth as possible to get those tools in his or her hands to be able to engage that rising generation. And what becomes so hard is now you're taking a look at from the parent or the grandparents perspective. They want to prepare the rising generation many times. Obviously there's no absolutes, but many times more times than not, they may not want to tell the rising generation we are worth X number of dollars. So it's difficult to engage them on the quantitative side without maybe giving details about net worth that you don't want to give. So we say, well, it's easy. Give them.

 

Shawn (13:01.248)

an equal voice on the qualitative side. We're talking about communication. We're talking about core values. We're talking about family legacy. We're talking about gratitude, philanthropy, governance. We're not talking about the dollars and cents. And so when we give the rising generation equal voice on the qualitative side, that has been very empowering and certainly has been great at getting the rising generation really engaged and excited about our process. So that's one of the first pieces of data that really kicked me in the shins. And it made me realize early on,

 

that this process was never about grandma, grandpa, mom, dad. And I tell our clients this, this process isn't about you. It's about little Johnny and little Susie and the cousins and everything else, right? And it made me realize that very early on. And certainly that piece of data is one of many that kicked me in the shins, but that one maybe being the most prominent.

 

Michael:
One of the things you mentioned earlier that you spent time with Roy Williams and in Roy's and Vic's, you know, research, they came back with some data that I think is really pertinent to talk about. You know what I'm talking about? Why families don't, the shirt sleeves, the shirt sleeves in three generation or from stalls to stars to stalls, which it's pervasive around the world. So whether it's real or not real, we still talk about it.

 

You know what I mean? So we can do the research to say, is it really, you know, three generations and wealth is lost? I think that it's to your point, there are some families that have done it really well. What did they do? There are some families that haven't done it so well. And what happened there? Where did it break down? But I think it's worth talking about, you know, why it broke down. I think most people think that it's probably because they didn't have good advice. Their documents were off base or the stock market crashed right before these things happened.

 

But that's not the case, is it?

 

Shawn (14:53.23)

No, it's not the case. So it's really interesting. If you look inside, I know you've been presenting our Vision 360 research piece. I think you've done it now twice, right, with two families. And so one of the things that we talk about in a couple slides, I don't know if you remember you and I going through it a while back, is that these are the two most important slides in here, the perception versus reality slides. And so when you ask families, and I forget who did, I think Family Office Exchange, I don't remember exactly who did that research, but when you ask what do you feel are the biggest threats to your wealth, 97 % of the responses are some sort of financial calamity. The perception is that only 3 % of the threat to my financial wealth is lack of communication, unprepared heirs, so forth and so on. The perception.

 

Now you look at the reality and it's 85 % of families lose their financial wealth because of a breakdown of communication, trust, lack of governance, lack of shared vision, value, purpose. You have everybody going in different directions. And so that perception versus reality is an incredible opportunity for advisors to educate their wealthiest families on here's what you may think is going to hurt you. And here's really what's hurting you or what could hurt you, should say. What could hurt your family. So you can be proactive about it. You can be reactive about it. The choice is yours. that's been...

 

I think that research has also very much stuck out of me. And I think it's one of the things since 2007 that has changed demonstrably in the industry is that families now realize, and the advisors most importantly, the advisors are critical. The advisors realize that it is more than money. It's just not managing the financial assets, which of course is critically important. Always is, always will be. All we're saying is that there's more to it. And that qualitative side.

 

And if you want to, mean, just we were on the ultra high network Institute for a while and you look at the work that they did on the 10 domains of family wealth and grubman and the great work they did at the Institute. If you look at that, there's really nine domains with the advisor in the middle to manage all nine of those domains. And the advisor is the 10th domain. Six of those nine domains are qualitative. So how, how, how, how is the advisor going to manage?

 

Shawn (17:00.788)

six of nine domains that are qualitative without having a system process and structure. And again, that's the void that we've been filling. And that's why we're having so much success on the SaaS side, like we are with you, and certainly white labeling our technology for large broker dealers and family offices and so forth. So that's our mission. That's our mission. Those pieces of research really, really stood out to me about being dictated to the perception versus the reality. Those pieces really stuck out.

 

Michael:

Yeah, you know the relation that you just talked about drew something out of me when I talk with family business owners and we talk about, you know why they're stuck. Why you know what are the bottlenecks in their business at any given time? It's very rarely is it the systems or their ability to execute or their strategy. Don't get me wrong. It definitely comes up, but they can't get to those levels of things unless they focus on the people.

 

And when they're focusing on the people, it's all about culture. And culture is all about values and purpose. What is our big, why do we exist beyond money? And when we can do that inside of a business, it starts to make sense and the business grows because the people grew. Well, guess what? Same thing happens inside of the family. The being able to run the business, being able to manage the wealth, being able to do all of those things when the family grows, when trust grows, when communication grows, when the values are, we've identified, you know, what does John and, you what does everybody value for themselves? What do we agree to value? What do we disagree to value? And what do we agree to disagree on, right? 

 

I think it really, it just clicked again for me that this is more processes, more systems, more talk about raising people up and less talk and focus on What is the tax bill look like and how do we avoid taxes? Because those things will happen. There's really smart people out there. We can get those things all done. But if we don't have the systems and processes for the people to work together and row in the same direction, we're going to be in trouble.

 

Shawn (19:10.85)

Yeah, well, that's exactly right. That's exactly right. But the question is, how? How do you do this?

 

Michael:

Yes.

 

So talk about what does it look like? know a family says all right Shawn Michael. I'm in I want to know more about this stuff What does that start to look like? What is an engagement? You know when we start talking about more than money for the first time How do I even talk about this with my kids or my grandkids? What am I doing? You know, how am I talking with you or me? You know, how would somebody do that? What do they what does that look like?

 

Shawn:
So we engage shown a lot of different levels. So we have our more than money advisory, which is our company that works directly with families. Family gets referred to us, whatever it be. That's really, it's been an evolution of my personal practice that Rowe convinced me, God love him for it. Shawn, this is bigger than all of us. Let's go change the industry. And so from an MTM advisory side, we have a number of research educational pieces that we go through with the family, we will certainly at the beginning do the vision light that you and I have been talking about, which again, as you well know, presents a lot of research and really lays out some of the unique challenges that successful families are confronted with. So they understand the why behind it all. So again, we built it from research and we engage families at the beginning from research. So they understand, not Michael talking to his blue in the face or someone from your team or Shawn talking to his blue in the face. Hey, this is really important. Why? Because I say so. No.

 

Here's why it's important. Here's the research that demonstrates why it's important. Do you want these things to happen to your family? So they understand why. That's the first thing you always need to address. Why am I taking my time to do this? Why, why, why? Then you need, second step is you need to begin with the end in mind. So we're gonna build a curriculum. We're gonna build a project. Call it what you would like to take your family through to improve one of the five pillars of multi-generational success that we talk about. Communication, core values, family legacy.

 

Shawn (21:05.602)

gratitude and philanthropy, we kind of count as one and then governance. So let's just take an example that they're working on communication. We identify their social styles, their appreciation styles, whatever it may be. And so we will gather this data prior to walking into the family forum, but we begin with the end in mind saying, okay, what is it you want your family to do? We want to communicate better. Okay, great. So we know that's the goal. Then we work backwards and we build the project in the curriculum to help them achieve that initial outcome criteria. And one thing we say to our clients all the time, this is a process, not an event.

 

The various pillars will stack upon each other. We believe communication is the most important. It's the lifeblood of a successful wealth transfer. The other pillars are not nearly as effective unless we have a family communicating at a very high level about really what our sensitive topics. That's not easy to do. It's hard. So that communication piece is certainly critical as we move forward. And certainly, I think one of the places where we start the most. But to answer your question, how do we engage the family? Education certainly showing them that we have a process that will get them to their end goal when we begin with the end in mind. So that's how we go through it. Really a three step process. Research education, begin with the end in mind, present the structure and curriculum of customized of here's how we're get your family to end in mind that you have that outcome criteria, that goal that you would like to achieve with your family as we capture the family voice and the family life experiences and so forth. So that's how we would go. 

 

Michael:

Love it. You talked about the five pillars. If you wouldn't mind, just let's go through them a little slower. Just talk about what that looks like in each of those pillars and why they're important and why you've designated those as the five pillars.

 

Shawn:
Sure Absolutely. It all goes back to research, research, research. And so when you research, you know, 100 families over 100 years and three generations, you know, Jaffe has done such a brilliant job of, love when his, first of all, I love the name of his book, Borrowed From Our Grandchildren. It just captures that stewardship mentality. I thought it was brilliant. When his book first came out, I read it and I read it twice and I read it three times and I said, thank you, Lord. Everything this man is discussing in this book, we have systematized in our process. And so,

 

Shawn (23:10.752)

It's great because we have such great researchers in our industry. But back in 07, we identified that the most successful families proactively focused on these five pillars. Communication, identifying what are the core values of the family, what are the shared core values, family legacy, what are we gonna stand to, what's our shared vision? And then philanthropy and gratitude. We'd couple those together. Governance is the last one, yeah.

 

Michael:

What is that shared vision for the family where gratitude is, know, what are we thankful for? And then how do we give thanks and how do we utilize our philanthropic dollars? How do we utilize what we have, our gifts and our talents and our treasures out in the world? Governance, what is governance? A lot of times people get tripped up on that word.

 

Shawn:

Yeah, so we call governance the business of being a successful family. And so we really feel that the pillars build upon each other. We really think that communication should be addressed first. Let me just take a step back if I could please share that communication should be addressed first so that we have the family communicating at very high level about sensitive topics and knowing the different social styles. Almost sunshine yellow. Someone else in the families of fiery red or cool blue or earth green amiable, whatever it may be, and understanding how to relate to these different social cells to elevate clarity, minimize conflict.

 

Right then typically we have families move on to core values. We have to identify the shared core values of the family. Why? Because they serve the core. Those shared core guys will serve as the foundation of the family legacy mission statement, the family philanthropy and the family governance. So you see they all stack on top of each other. Right. And so then when we get into the family legacy, we say, OK, well, here we know what our top two shared core values of the family are and we can we can help them build and write a family legacy. And we have systems and processes and kind of structures to help families write legacy mission statements. We'll be doing it in a couple weeks again for another family. So the pillars build upon each other and we also create opportunities for the for the rising generation to engage with the family's advisor. We know two-thirds of advisors are losing an account when the first spouse passes away. Why? So ask yourself why? Little Johnny and Little Suzy don't know Mr. or Mrs. Advisor. Mom and Dad know Mr. or Mrs. Advisor.

 

Shawn (25:21.208)

But when one spouse goes, they say, surviving parent, come to our advisor and we'll help you get through it. Well, that's a major failure on the part of the advisor working with mom and dad. You need to engage that right. So we've we've created experiential learning opportunities over our 18 years of how to seamlessly engage the rising generation. For example, we have one wrapped around the sustainable development goals, impact investing with the United Nations. And so everybody in the family can complete. have over 40 surveys, one of which is wrapped around impact investing.

 

Everybody in the family completes it. We know that their top sustainable development goals as a family are three, seven, and 12, if you know anything about the SDGs, right? Well, then we take that now to the wealth manager and we say, okay, mom, dad, grandma, grandpa, let's peel off X number of dollars in your account. Let's get them working directly with your advisor. And now the rising generation, not you, the rising generation are going to manage this account together. So they need to decide, okay, which SDGs do we want to support? What companies are we going to invest in for that?

 

And now they're making group decisions together. Okay. It's governance with training wheels on and by the way, they're working directly with the financial advisor in his or her core business. This is a natural, this is a natural part of our process. So we believe firmly that is in the family's multi-generational interests, best interests to be working with one advisor for all the generations for the most part, having one advisor be that primary quarterback for the entire family that serves.

 

the family's best interest we believe. Now, of course, they're gonna have different advisor might have an account over here with a few bucks, count over there with, that's gonna happen. They're gonna be in this private deal, that's always gonna happen. But having one quarterback drive the bus multi-generationally. And so we really try our best to get advisors engaged in a meaningful way with the rising generation in their core business. And impact investing is one of many ways that we do it.

 

So we do very much believe that that is critical to multi-generational success. But in order for that to happen, we need to find as many advisors as possible that have that multi-generational mindset.

 

Michael (27:26.318)

I wholeheartedly as a firm that has served some of our top clients 40 years now, 30 or 40 years because of my father served them before I did. And you see things both good and bad and patterns. you also, why did this happen 20 years ago? This is why, and this is what we're supposed to be doing with it. And there's a continuity that happens for the family. And what I would say is, more of the gaps are closed and opportunities are exposed easier when there's one person quarterbacking and having the conversation with the business, with the family and with the wealth and the attorneys in the account. And so that they see everything and that global look really does make a big difference.

 

Shawn:
Absolutely, it makes a big difference. And the family having one go-to advisor makes a big difference. 

 

Michael:

Yeah. 

 

Shawn:

And we've always been massive proponents of that. So that's why we feel it's so critical to get the rising generation meaningfully engaged, meaningfully engaged. The rising generation in our experience does not respond well to what I call the slap on the back steak dinner. You're the greatest. No, you're the greatest. That's not the way they're, why, that's not what we've seen. They want to have their voice heard.

 

They want to have an opinion. want to make the world a better place. It really is a beautiful generation. They want to make the world a better place. Very purpose driven. And that's great when you're talking about the qualitative side of wealth. The rising generation is primed to engage in this conversation if you speak their language and you go about it the right way. So that's been critical to our success.

 

Michael:

Would you, is it all right if we introduce the six laws of family advancement and sustainability and talk about some of the things that you, when you're engaging, when we're engaging with clients and families, what are, we've got the five pillars, but there's also, you call them the six laws of family advancement and sustainability. I think it's worth sharing some of that with people.

 

Shawn (29:27.688)

So one of the things that we did during the initial research is identify why families were having a tough time succeeding over multiple generations. And so when we did that, they were all negative. They were all negative, which is lack of communication, lack of trust, right? They're all just not very positive. So we flipped that on its head and said, how can we not, because I don't want this to be a negative presentation.

 

MIchael:
Right, Of course.

 

Shawn:

And so much of Wealth 3.0 talks about coming out this from the negative. So funny, because that's the way we approached it while ago. So when we talk about the six laws of family advancement, sustainability, we're really taking some of the negatives that families that did not succeed and what they did and did not do well. But first of all, you have to have meaningful communication. That's the key word. I remember talking with years ago, I remember talking with a patriarch of a family and he was out of Texas and he had three boys.

 

And said to him, do you have meaningful conversation? Do you really sit down and talk to your children about what's important? What it is you wanna accomplish? He's like, yeah, not really, but we do talk about the Dallas Cowboys a lot. And I said, okay, so that's commonality, that's great, love it. But we need meaningful communication. What is the purpose of this wealth? What is their role in this? Like you don't have any of those conversations. Those are the conversations families need to have in a structured way. So that certainly is one of the big ones is elevating meaningful communication.

 

The other one that we've seen is we call it the destructive mentality of entitlement. What can the money do for me over an attitude of gratitude? How can I help the world with the money and creating a balance between that? We're not telling wealthy families not have nice things. We're not telling wealthy families don't live a great life. We're not telling them don't fly private to the fill in the blank place and stay at a five star resort. We're not saying that. Then we need to balance it with gratitude. And when we talk about the experiential learning, I know we talked a little bit around impact investing. One of the other.

 

Shawn (31:18.094)

specifically to this topic about elevating gratitude within the family. One of the things that we've been doing for years, well over a decade, is we coined the term active gratitude. It is incredibly, incredibly generous for Michael Palumbos to stroke a check to ABC Charity for fill in the blank. Most beneficial to the family is to volunteer at ABC Charity for X period of hours together as a family. Shared experience of value that strengthens unity, teaches gratitude over entitlement. It gives the rising generation a firsthand look at maybe a support or a group of folks that are struggling, right? That don't have, you know, mom and dad with the 15,000 square foot house, right? They're homeless or whatever the fact pattern may be, right? So elevate gratitude, create shared experience of value within the family and certainly help try to stomp out that entitlement as much as possible. Third one we've already talked about, you have to engage the rising generation. You have to give them a voice.

 

And our system process structure and quite frankly, the technology allows them to express their voice in a way that they're comfortable. So that really the third of the six laws engaging the rising generation in a shared family vision is certainly all around the engagement piece.

 

Michael:

Let me jump in for just a second, Shawn, because I want to connect this when you're talking about the gratitude and philanthropy. One of the things that I have firmly believed and I've seen it is that one of the nice parts about philanthropy and is that, yes, you get gratitude out of it because you see the impact when you're actively doing these things, but it's also…I don't remember whether I, I don't think I coined this. I'm sure somebody else did and I just don't remember who did, who said it, but philanthropy is a sandbox for entrepreneurship. And what I mean by that, when I say that is that it's, you know, I can't take my nine year old or my 12 year old or my 16 year old and put them into roles that are meaningful inside the business. It's just, that's not, that doesn't work, but I can take a nine year old, a 12 year old, even a five year old or a 16 year old.

 

Michael (33:20.632)

put them all together in this philanthropy sandbox and really get them meaningfully and actively involved in these things because it doesn't have the same level of, it's separating the business from those pieces, but we're still gonna ask them to communicate. We're gonna ask them to lead. We're gonna ask them to do research. We're gonna ask them to get involved and see what's happening. So you get to develop a lot of the characteristics, you know, if you've got three cousins working together, they're going to have to compromise because they're not all going to be thinking exactly the same. It's just a really wonderful way. And it does both there, engaging that rising generation and putting them together and preparing them for what's going to happen down the road without them saying, oh, you're teaching me how to be a leader. I don't want you to see what I'm saying. It's kind of like under the radar, I would say a little bit.

 

Shawn:

No, for sure. I agree with you entirely. I agree with you entirely. I think it's an astute way to look at it. So number four was always around being intentional. Nothing happens by happenstance. You have to intentionally focus on the qualitative, which takes you into the fifth law, family advancement, sustainability, intentional focus. You have to focus on the qualitative. And then finally, when elevate transparency and trust, we live by the motto that transparency breeds trust and it's human nature. If I think Michael is hiding something fromit.

 

What is he hiding? Why is he hiding it? Must be bad. just human nature. So it sounds so silly. But one thing that is so important that we do on the MTM advisory side and we encourage all our SAS advisors to do that if they're going to have a family meeting at the end, show everybody the agenda at least a week or two ahead of time. We tell folks dress comfortably, come prepared to have fun and be productive. The outcome criteria for e very single one of our family forums for 18 years has been fun and productive. We can have a few laughs, have a few smiles, get even better together as a family. Cause these are already great families. They've had success. How can they get even better together? Michael Jordan had a coach, LeBron James had a coach, right? So folks need some guidance structure and process to take that next step on the ultra high net worth side from a qualitative perspective. And we're here to help advisors do that. We're here to help families do that. And that is everything that the more than money mission is about.

 

Shawn (35:42.964)

And the more hands we get on the fly, we all the better, just like certainly with family wealth and legacy and congratulations on all your success. It's been great. I've known you a long time, Michael. I'm very happy for you. 

 

Michael:

Thank you.

 

You talk, I want to go back and systems and processes are put in place with more than money. This has been really important to me for years. Some of that importance has come out of the fact that I have, you know, I went through a divorce and, and, and I would, and, know, and people that have listened to the show a bunch of times, they know that Michael spent some time with a therapist getting, getting right around some things that I needed to work on that I wish that I didn't have when I was raising kids, but I did. And so I, you know, I've worked through a lot of these things to become a better version of myself. One of the things that we did, I've introduced some of these ideas and concepts with the family. did a family, the whole 25 of us went through and did a disc profiles. And we had somebody come in and facilitate it. And I will tell you that the family was resistant when we started.

 

They did not think that this was going to be great, but then they were like having all of these aha moments about that's why Michael or that's why, you know, why grandpa or Mimi does, you know, the things that they do and the, you know, whatnot. And they really, really appreciated it. But I'll go back and say that it was wonderful and fantastic, but I had no system or process for what's next. They didn't have a way of designing a curriculum. Guess how many more meetings like that we had.

 

And so I'm very excited. We're gonna be utilizing this within our family as we figure it out. I just gotta figure out who's gonna facilitate, because it can't be me.

 

Shawn (37:29.486)

We have plenty of great, we have 23 facilitators. We're happy to help you. Don't worry about that.

 

Michael:

So, 1 of the things that I think is also important is that you have a way of helping families decide. On what curriculum, what path to go down 1st. I think it's worth talking about it. It's really simple to go through and look at you have an assessment that families can go through and start to figure out, you know, talk about the assessment a little bit. Sure.

 

Shawn:

Sure, we have a library of over 40 digital assessments, all of which fall under the five pillars of multi-generational success that we have discussed. Before you get to all 40 or any of those surveys, we have something that we call the more than money meter. And more than money meter is, think it's, oh gosh, we just redid it with version seven. I believe it's close to 50 questions. Don't quote me on that. But it takes each family member through, ask them how prepared they are in the various five pillars with specific statements and then how satisfied they are with their level of preparation. So we're assessing two variables, preparedness and the family satisfaction with their level of preparedness. Because what we don't wanna have is a family come along and say, okay, in the five pillars, we're 36 % prepared in communication, but we're 80 % satisfied. Okay, well, that's a family that doesn't wanna get even better together. Thank you very much, God bless you, but have a great day. We can't help that, right?

 

So if they're 36 % prepared in communication by my hypothetical and they're 25 % prepared, excuse me, satisfied and misspoke, then that's a family we can help. So we have everybody complete the MTM meter prior to engaging in the process. It gives us almost like a baseline blood test that doctor would do. It gives us this baseline when they engage in the process, here's where they were in the five pillars of multi-generational success. We will know their preparedness and their satisfaction for each of those five pillars and then have an overall.

 

Shawn (39:19.522)

Preparedness and satisfaction score and then what we do after every family forum the family completes because this is one thing that that we really think is important The family will complete these same more than money meter questionnaire again And it'll be six months later whenever the first family forum is and then what we're able to do is compare that second Set of results with the first set of results and say, okay, we had a percentage increase here Here's how we here's how we feel on our preparedness side. Here's how we feel on our satisfaction side so we can on quantify, okay, you're not gonna hear that word come out of my mouth often quantify their percentage of improvement while also identifying continued areas in need much like a financial plan.

 

Michael (39:58.)

And so in the financial plan, if you're looking out and saying, this is where I'm supposed to be 10 years from now, you can pull out that PDF copy of the financial plan that was written 10 years ago and say in 2025, here we are 2025, we did this plan in 2015, in 2025, where am I supposed to be asset wise? Where am I supposed to be all these, in each of these different areas, insurance and risk and whatnot, and my tax bills. And now I can look at it and say,

 

Am I on track with this and to be able to do that on the on the on the quantitative, know, on the qualitative side is just really, really fabulous. We do it in our businesses. So the family businesses, you know, we put together a strategic plan that says here's what I won 3, 5, 10 year goals are and we're tracking to see are we on track on our 3 year goal? You know our 3 year highly achievable goal. Are we on track for our BHAG? Are we moving in that right direction?

 

And now you can do the same thing around areas like values and communication gratitude. That's fabulous. That was that's 1 of the reasons why that more than that, the more the money meter. It means a lot to me and I think that the people that go through and and take that to see where they're at and get that baseline. It's a very powerful.

 

Shawn (41:19.052)

It’s Human Nature, mean, people want to know how am doing? Am I getting better? Is all this worth it? Right? Lord Melvin said, we cannot improve what we cannot measure. So our more than money meter is exactly that. It's our opportunity to measure where they are in the five pillars from preparedness and satisfaction perspective, and then stack them on. We have families been taking the MTM meter seven, eight years. Now we can see from the beginning to now how they've improved and where they need to continue to focus. Cause families needs, you know, better than anybody. They evolve over time.

 

Michael:

Any parting words, anything that I haven't asked you that I should have.

 

Shawn:

This was great. You're always well prepared and on point, Mr. Palumbos. You're doing great. Thank you. Thank you for having me. I do appreciate it. was good to be back on. It's been a while.

 

Michael:

And it was a very good conversation. can't wait to share this with people. For those of you who are interested to want to learn more about this topic, you just come and check out the familywealthandlegacy.com website. You reach out to either Shawn or myself on LinkedIn. No problem doing those things. Shawn, matter of fact, what is your website?

 

Shawn:

Just www.morethanmoney60.com that is our client site. Our advisor site where folks go to SaaS and learn about the SaaS packages is www.aspida60.com  My grandfather, my namesake was born in Sparta, Greece. And if you research the Spartan warrior, they deem their shield, not their spears, their greatest weapon, because it protected them to fight for their family another day.

 

Shawn (42:51.038)

Speed is the Greek word for shield. So it was my way of honoring my grandfather, but also helping families protect themselves to fight for another generation. A little bit different than the Spartan warrior, but certainly that's our mentality.

 

Michael (43:02.)

Thank you everybody for joining us. My name is Michael Palumbos with Family Wealth and Legacy in Rochester, New York, and you've been listening to the Family Biz Show. Can't wait to have you on a future episode and listen in and learn with us. Thanks again, everybody. Have a great day.