Keith Whitaker is an educator who consults with leaders and rising generation members of families with significant wealth. We had an interesting conversation touching on Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, but also on Keiths long practical experience working with the wealthy.  We talk about the cycle of the gift in families, the concept of magnificence, and his work on books with Jay Hughes, Paul Schervish on Wealth and the Will of God and his recent collaboration with Tom McCullough on the Wealth of Wisdom books. Keith is Managing Director of Wise Counsel Research.  He is the co-author of W ..read more

“Generativity is the human impulse to nurture, to do good things for the next generation and to see myself, my life, in a sense, being extended through the possibilities in my children and grandchildren.” Today, in conjunction with the James E Hughes Jr. Foundation, I’d like to present my interview with one of Jay’s longtime collaborators John A. Warnick.  John A., as he is known, is the founder of the Purposeful Planning Institute, which trains lawyers, financial planners, trustees, and wealth managers to work with clients on their planning that is congruent with their core values and v ..read more

George Marcus wrote a book you probably haven’t heard of, but should.  It is called Lives in Trust and it was published in 1992 and is $146 on Amazon right now.   Professor Marcus is an anthropologist who studied tribes in Tonga and then applied what he learned to study dynastic wealth in families starting in Texas.  The book has great essays on the HL Hunt family, who tried to corner the silver market in 1980, the Bingham family, who fought over a newspaper chain in Kentucky, a study of two very different family fortunes in Galveston Texas, and an analysis of one of my favorit ..read more

Today we are speaking with Gunther Weil.   Gunther has known some of the 20th century’s most interesting psychologists including Carl Rogers, Abraham Maslow, Gordon Allport, Timothy Leary and Henry Murray as well as such names as Tony Robbins and Eckhart Tolle.  We talk about them, his journey in and out of the psychedelic world, and his later work with Jay Hughes and John A Warnick at the Purposeful Planning Institute, where he was their longtime Dean of Values.  Gunther is a deeply thoughtful guest and his reflections on life, values, transcendence, grace and his own experienc ..read more

“Families that are failing spend all their time on power.” Today's guest is Jay Hughes. Jay and I had a deep and fascinating discussion about the development of the elder in a family, the importance of the midlife crisis, and transcendent values.  We also discussed many great pioneers in the family wealth field like Joanie Bronfman, Charlie Collier, and Peter Karoff, and we also talked about Matt Wesleys key paper on family culture, which I will link to in the show notes. Jay also mentioned that he is writing a new book with Mary K. Duke and Stacy Allred, and has a lecture course online ..read more

Today we are speaking with once again Dr. James Grubman, an internationally recognized consultant to families of wealth, family businesses, and the advisors who serve them.  He is the co-author of one of the buzziest books of the year called Wealth 3.0:  The Future of Family Wealth Advising along with Dennis Jaffe and Kristin Keffeler, who I have also interviewed previously on this podcast.  I wanted to talk to Jim and get some more color on his attitudes towards wealth advising, the issues with the literature and research in the space, how to escape from a fear-based mindset to ..read more

Jonathan Pageau is a French Canadian icon carver, public speaker and YouTuber exploring the symbolic patterns that underlie our experience of the world, how these patterns emerge and come together, manifesting in religion, art and in popular culture. He's also the editor of the Orthodox Arts Journal and host of the Symbolic World blog and podcast.  I was looking for someone to talk about Spiritual Captial, and was not disappointed.  We talk about how money should be thought of as pure potential, how borrowing “accelerates time” and “pulls from the future.”  We also discuss how y ..read more

Our interview today is with Eric Schoenberg, who is one of the very few people deeply exploring inherited wealth in academia, and we cover his own inheritance and family life, why he became interested in studying wealth, economic concepts like the bequest motive, revealed preferences, and the wonderfully named “spite clause” as well as Eric’s considered thoughts on why people do what they do with their fortunes.  He also speculates on who was the wealthiest American ever, and it is not who you think. Eric Schoenberg was educated at Harvard, received an MBA from Wharton, worked as a diplo ..read more

Today we are talking to Tony Guernsey, former national head of Wilmington Trust wealth management, a longtime senior banker at JP Morgan, founder of the UBS US private bank. Tony wrote an unpublished memoir called Divas, Icons, and Felons with his wisdom and great stories from his distinguished five decades managing money for many wealthy and famous clients such as Steve Jobs, Jay Chiat, and Christo. Tony was very generous to share some of them with me and it is a rare peek inside this often fascinating and eccentric world, but it also highlights the lack of education out there for those who h ..read more

Paul Sullivan is on a mission to rethink fatherhood, and he is doing it with thousands of parents. Paul is the bestselling author of two books, Clutch: Excel Under Pressure, and the Thin Green Line: The Money Secrets of the Super Wealthy. We talk about his decade of studying the wealthy for the New York Times, fatherhood, teaching children about wealth, and the community of lead dads he is building nationwide. FOLLOW PAUL: https://twitter.com/sullivanpaul WEBSITE: https://thecompanyofdads.com/ BOOKS: Clutch: Excel Under Pressure Thin Green Line: The Money Secrets of the Super Wealthy Joe Reill ..read more