Articles

In the midst of myriad demands in both multi-generational family business and first generational family business, the ideals of balanced human, intellectual, and financial success can seem like a pipe dream.  How can families successfully listen to each other and strive for fulfillment within the complex intricacies of a family business?

Simply “hoping” the collection of advisors you’ve chosen is offering ideas that match your and your family members’ dreams, goals, and passions is a long-shot at best…especially if their sense of these values has not been defined…and repeated throughout the planning process...

You’ve seen the caricature of a classic fight between a wife and a husband on their anniversary.  She’s furious and doling out the silent treatment.  He’s baffled and asking what she wants from him.  “If I have to tell you, it’s ruined,” she answers.  He groans, knowing that unless he suddenly acquires the capacity to read her mind, he’s never going to win.  He gets ready for another night on the couch...

“Shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves” and “rice paddies to rice paddies” in three generations.  This is a universal proverb Jay Hughes discovered in 1974 following the challenge he was given by the patriarch of his Singapore client.  To comprehend why this appears to Hughes to be so prevalent, we must dream a little - perhaps more than a little...

Everyone you talk to and everywhere you go, it seems people are experiencing excessive stress. Young teens & pre-teens, colleagues & clerks appear to be overstressed.  Who wouldn’t choose creativity over stress?

Considering stress vs. creativity, I am sure everyone would choose creativity every day of the week. But what do you do when the walls of stress press in around you? 

When almost one-half of earnings are attributable to how much employees “buy into” the company’s corporate culture the reality of “Getting the Values off the Wall and into the Hall,” gives compelling reasons to build an organizational culture everyone can buy into...

As advisors, nearly every time we meet a new family, we encounter one of two mindsets:  the perception that their estate planning is finished and the individual who says they are done…yet seeds of doubt tickle the backs of their brains...

My 9^th grade Civics Teacher had a 12” sign above the chalkboard which read “What man can dream man can do”.  For the past 3 dozen years this quote has stimulated me to dream and to do.  That may, in fact, be the only thing I remember from that class, yet it is profound...