This week’s highlights:  Spending Money, Basketball, and Induction Stoves Stay warm out there… Photo by Francesca Hotchin on Unsplash Happy Friday! – Have a great weekend Original Content this week: FCS – Family Governance Must Focus on Whole Family – Not Just the Client – Family office / business has moved from a cottage industry to one increasingly institutionalized and mature.  Part and parcel of that maturation is the ‘productization’ of many tools and practices that have been developed over the past 30 years or so, such as family governance.   ..read more

Photo by NICE GUYS on Pexels.com Things that appear positive at first glance, but are ultimately negative, are especially pernicious. And no industry is immune, the world of family wealth included. The positive is that many of the ideas and techniques that began in the “cottage industry” of helping family business transition their ownership a generation ago are being rapidly adopted more broadly. Concepts such as family governance, legacy planning, core values, family education, etc. have been adapted by an emerging family office industry. The negative is that far too often these tools are bei ..read more

This week’s highlights:  Rick Rubin on Creativity, Disciplined Growth Investing, and Concrete Photo by Elijah Pilchard on Unsplash Happy Friday! – Cheers,  David Topic of the Week 60 Minutes – Interview with Rick Rubin.  As an NYU college student, Rick Rubin launched Def Jam Recordings some 40 years ago and has been a hitmaker ever since. Anderson Cooper interviews the music producer about his unique approach. HuddleUp – The Hidden Details Behind David Beckham’s MLS Contract That Earned Him $500 Million GQ – The Dave Bautista Method. After han ..read more

This week’s highlights:  Quiet Quitting, Capital Allocation, Gene Editing Photo by Andrea Windolph on Unsplash Happy New Year – Welcome back to the real world after the 2 week long-weekend that marks the end of December…I hope your holidays were great and that you stayed warm in the crazy cold snap. Original Content:  What I Read During Q4’22 – I previously posted a list of my favorite reads from all of 2022, I do post a complete list with a few pithy thoughts on each.  Here is Q4’s list.   Cheers,  David Topic of the Week WSJ – C ..read more

Photo by Genaro Servín on Pexels.com Here is a complete final run down of all the books I read during the fourth quarter of 2022. You can find other lists by quarter here –  First Quarter, Second Quarter, Third Quarter Investing The End of the World Is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization by Peter Zeihan. This was absolutely excellent – Author and geopolitical strategist Peter Zeihan maps out the next world: a world where countries or regions will have no choice but to make their own goods, grow their own food, secure their own energy, fight their own battl ..read more

This week’s highlights:  James Cameron, Avoiding Conflict, and Commercial Real Estate Photo by Richard Stachmann on Unsplash Happy Friday everyone – 9 days to go…hope you aren’t facing the malls this weekend! Original Content:  3 Thought Provoking Charts – If a picture is worth a thousand words, here are three that will get you thinking.   A Lack Boundary Lines Make Family Offices Complicated. Often we describe something best by describing what it is not…But what are we to do with organizations that don’t have those helpful boundary lines? Cheers,  Da ..read more

Here are three charts from the past 6 months or so that have been thought provoking Oil and the Green Transition The growth of environmentally focused policies and governance are starving new oil and gas production…interesting to consider how we get energy to go from current state to future state More here Maybe Housing Prices Aren’t Only Driven by Interest Rates The housing market is getting a lot of attention with the increase in interest rates. But it gets more interesting when you look at the rate of household formations vs. housing starts. More info here Which Decile Does Your Alcohol Con ..read more

Photo by Lukas on Pexels.com It may sound contradictory, but constraints can be delightfully liberating. Faced with the possibility of doing anything, some times, the natural reaction is to do nothing. Anyone who has sat down in front of the Cheesecake Factory has experienced this firsthand. Family offices experience this as well. Part of the power of a single family office is the flexibility it has in tailoring itself to meet the needs of the family. Yet this ‘blank page’ approach to the building of a single family office makes doing so all the more challenging. While often, a business or org ..read more

This week’s highlights:  Friendship, Philanthropy and Liquid Death Photo by Tijana Drndarski on Unsplash Happy Friday everyone – The holiday season has arrived and the sprint to New Year’s is on.  I hope your Thanksgiving was wonderful.   If you are doing any shopping, here are my 5 favorite books that I read this past year.  Book Recommendations for Christmas 2022 No major theme emerged for this week’s edition – here are a selection of interesting and thought provoking pieces.   Cheers,  David Topic of the Week NYT – Why Is It So Hard for Me ..read more

Photo by Kristina Paukshtite on Pexels.com For those of you looking for stocking stuffers for Christmas this year, I wanted to recommend my favorite books of the year. (all links are Amazon affiliate links) Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging We have a strong instinct to belong to small groups defined by clear purpose and understanding–“tribes.” This tribal connection has been largely lost in modern society, but regaining it may be the key to our psychological survival. From Strength to Strength: Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life. Many of us assume th ..read more