Why Family Councils Matter: Bridging Wisdom Across Generations – Episode 662

This transcript was auto-generated and may contain errors.

[00:00] I founded Ornoto in 2013 and we made clothing for cyclists. For me, the best part of Shopify is the possibility of managing the business even without technical knowledge. We managed to manage everything, from back-end to front-end and make online sales, without complications. If Shopify were a cycling equipment, I would say it would be the bicycle itself. And that’s what allows us to get where we want. It is in Shopify that we manage our business. Start your free evaluation at shopify.com Welcome to the Prosperity Podcast. Prosperity thinkers, on this podcast episode, we’re going to be talking about family councils. But this is multiple generation family councils. Kim, before we do that, we’re going to give a quick…

[00:49] A couple episodes ago, we talked about gold and silver and how the markets were moving. Obviously, they’ve had some of the most insane market spikes and market drops. I read an article, and you would have some insight on this. This is a part of the family generation, which is the younger generation, and many of them, feel like they’re never going to buy a house and they’re never going to be ready for the future. So why try and they put their money into polymarket, or they put their money into crypto, or they do other things like that. Have you seen that happen as well? Absolutely. I think it’s the natural aspect of just not really knowing and wanting to do something. When you have smaller dollars, you do have limited choices.

[01:40] And there’s so much out there today that lets those smaller dollars be gambled with. It’s not even investing. That’s the word gambling. That is the word. In the article, they use the word gambling. And what’s crazy is this gambling is actually, in many cases, a bot gambling with another bot that a person thinks is not a bot, and they’re being taken. It is so odd. We could sit around the table with a bunch of high schoolers as you just prepared some documents and training for high school age kids. And they’d say, oh, polymarket, you got to do this and follow this bot or this AI or this thing. And a person with wisdom, like in a family council, would say, I can learn from this. Let me give you some perspective.

[02:30] So we’re coming to you with some perspective on the family councils. How is it that you’re counseling the next generation, the younger generation, and shaping the generations behind them? Well, I want to tell a story first of a time when I was young and somebody else’s family council had a big impact on me. Aware that there was a need for money for raw land, which is obviously not cash flowing asset. It’s just kind of sitting there, very speculative. And there was awareness amongst a couple people of this opportunity and also of a family member that was young that had capability. She had a trust fund. And everybody thought, oh, well, that’s the solution. Well, she agreed and was all in until her grandfather

[03:25] reminded her that her trust fund had very specific requirements for anything that that money would be involved in. And it precluded gambling and used the word literally as well as some other things that wouldn’t normally be called gambling, would often fall under the guise of investing that we all know is not. And so this is the wisdom that a family council can bring forth. And it can be actual blood family. It can be a neighbor person that is helping out. It can be a board of directors. I remember when I was new building my business, it was recommended to me that I create my own little board of directors and present to them my marketing plans and my growth plans and what I was doing and my systems, et cetera.

[04:20] Super, super valuable. That can be the form of a family council. And it’s just that wisdom of experience in life that is so capable and so available. And people that are experienced have time and want to share and love to have a space to tell their stories that can benefit the younger generations and the younger. I mean, it’s not uncommon in today’s world with people living so much longer that you have four generations in a household. How awesome it is that your grandchild can help you program your phone and how awesome it is that you can share wisdom with your great grandchild about money or whatever the case may be. And what is necessary for this to take place is time. Unstructured time. Now, it can happen quickly, you know, without a doubt.

[05:25] Somebody’s got a problem. They got to get on the phone and solve it. Obviously, the value can be shared in that space. But what is more valuable is when there is unstructured time. And the generations are just allowed to converse and share stories and create relationships that can stand the test of time to be able to share the wisdom from one generation to the next to the next in both directions. So how is it that you’re saying both directions? And I agree, I’m not actually pushing back. What I’m going to do is be the voice of the listener because a younger listener is going to say, well, what am I actually bringing to the table? And then an older listener may say, what is it that they actually want to hear?

[06:20] Absolutely. And they’re both great questions. So in so many cases, the younger person is bringing to the table a capability around technology. It could be the computer, it could be the phone, it could be AI, it could be a variety of different things. Yet it is so, so valuable to have that. They still bring a perspective that is valuable. They ask questions that are incredible. You know, I mean, there’s a saying like wisdom out of the mouth of babes or something like that. And the questions and the perspective and even just their own state of being because they typically are very, very happy. It’s kind of like having a dog around and you have a five-year-old around and there’s just a lot of stuff to laugh at.

[07:12] All of that is a contribution to the older generations. Now for the older generation, what is a contribution is a question. If you’re not sure what they want to hear, then ask. The younger generation is great at asking questions, even if it’s why, why, why 10 times. And the older generation can ask what is it that you’re curious about today? What is it that I could provide some wisdom about that you might want to know? What is it that you are struggling with right now that I might have a perspective on? Ask the question. That’s really the key on both sides of the table. Asking the question, okay. So there’s a couple of concrete pieces I want to get to for our listeners because the family counsels

[08:14] and you’ve written a wonderful book for any of you listeners that are looking for a deeper dive into this. Perpetual Wealth is a book that’s hundreds of pages of wisdom. It’s great. It’s a good read. It’s actually not even a difficult read. It’s a read full of wisdom. And for the listeners that are saying, okay, I don’t want to read the entire book. I want to take action now and read. You mentioned that it’s giving space for conversation, giving space for talking. What is a simple exercise that you’ve found to work for with your grown children and moving and weaving that conversation? Well, our grown children are not in our state, right? They live in other states and my dad lives in another state.

[09:10] My sister lives in another state. And so the biggest most helpful thing that I think that we do and maybe this just is for me is pretty much weekly phone calls. There’s times when we miss it, but having that weekly cadence of a phone call just keeps the questions going. And if you’re unsure what questions to ask, you can boil it down to two super simple things. What’s working and what’s not working. So you literally could say, what’s working about today? What’s working about your life, right? Like you could have a super tiny perspective on it. You could have an incredibly huge perspective on it. And then what’s not working about today or next week or this project that we’re all together on or the planning for the vacation

[10:04] that we’re going to be all together on. One of the things that’s in Perpetual Wealth is a story of a three and as the story progresses four generation family that is getting together for family retreats. And I think it’s got some wonderful wisdom in it. And of course, if you don’t want to read the book, you can grab the audibles, you can get it on Kindle. It is that story that really helps open people’s mind and yet at the same time, it causes them to be in the gap. So the gap is the space between where they are and where they want to be. And so this is the time where it’s super important to look back on your progress and all of happiness is related to progress. And so even if you just schedule

[10:52] a 30 minute call for your family to get together, maybe it’s on Zoom, that is progress. And you’re going to have some of your family that doesn’t want to do it. Take the ones that want to and inch forward and inch forward again and inch forward again. So don’t read Perpetual Wealth and think, oh my gosh, a family retreat, you know, we have to spend all this money. No, it can be done very simply. It can be done over a meal. It can be done quickly. It’s just a start. And then you look back and you see the progress that got made. And then you look forward and you get a vision for making a little bit more. And it’s just like all the things that we talk about, whether it’s your health or your mindset,

[11:35] it’s little baby steps of progress and then focusing on that progress and then turning forward and using that to pull you into the next step. And this is the way that the generations can benefit from one another in a way that is natural and normal and a part of our daily operation while at the same time being very purposeful. Because if we don’t land in this space with some purpose, it potentially won’t happen. I’m sure there’s circumstances where it could happen, but in most cases it won’t. And so you want to be purposeful about it. That’s great. I’m going to push back on the audience on one thing, which is this. And I’m only pushing back because I’ve heard it. And people in the audience, and I don’t know who you are,

[12:30] but I know there’s one, they say, if it’s so important and so good and so natural, why would I have to schedule it? If it’s not happening now, that’s why you have to schedule it. And again, it’s the baby steps. It’s what you mentioned. So incredibly good. Kim, thank you for giving us a couple of silver bullets that we can fire off to get our family councils going. And thanks for sharing some of your wisdom with us today. Thank you for listening to the Prosperity Podcast. To take control of your money and have it work for you, visit ProsperityThinkers.com.