The Proactive Mindset

May 28, 2015Family Business Consulting, Family Wealth Consulting, Wealth Psychology Consulting

In my work with enterprising families I get to see a lot of heart-warming situations. Parents, siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles, grandmas and grandpas develop rising generations and build on the generation(s) before them, combining family life and economic life in a way that brings out the best of both. These families have a way of seeing many possibilities for how the future can play out and they embrace them over time, sifting and sorting through them, looking at pros and Read more »

Children in the Family Business: Part II

June 24, 2014Family Business Consulting, Family Wealth Consulting, Wealth Psychology Consulting

Collaboration between professionals is crucially important for enterprising families. In this month’s Family Business Minute I “walk the walk” as I team up with my colleague from the Family Firm Institute, Tibor Dani, who interviews me on the topic of Bringing Children into the Family Business for his cool, new webcast site Family Businesscast (in his state-of-the-art, green-screen studio in northern New Jersey). Lots of fun! Please take a look and let me know if I applied my wife’s makeup properly. This interview builds on my February 2014 blog post and goes much deeper into best Read more »

Siblings, Family Business and Evolution

April 27, 2014Family Business Consulting, Family Wealth Consulting, Wealth Psychology Consulting

Darwin tells us that it is not necessarily the strongest that survive and perpetuate their species but the most ADAPTABLE. Big, powerful lions have been around for one million years but small, crafty chameleons have been around eighty million years. When it comes to sibling relationships the animal kingdom has some pretty interesting examples of selfless cooperation that we humans can learn from. Sea Rockets Sea rocket plants can recognize a sibling (they come from seeds from the same mother Read more »

Women in the Family Business (and Pro Ice Hockey For That Matter)

March 19, 2014Family Business Consulting, Family Wealth Consulting, Wealth Psychology Consulting

Shannon Szabados (pictured) recently became the first female to play in the Southern Professional Hockey league (for the Columbus Cottonmouths) and was the first woman to play in the Western Hockey League in 2002 at age 16. She also won two gold medals goaltending for the Canadian women’s hockey team, most recently in Sochi. Click here for the full NY Times article . While one might imagine that her male teammates might give her a hard time and resist the inclusion of women, that could not be further Read more »

If You Are Not Falling, You Are Not Trying

September 19, 2013Family Business Consulting

I have been coaching youth sports for many years and ice hockey is my favorite.  Currently I am working with eleven- and twelve-year-olds. During practice while teaching the players skating techniques, they inevitably make it a point to avoid falling. They try so hard to stay upright. This might seem logical and even desirable considering you can’t play hockey well if you’re always falling during a game. This logic misses the point. The only way to truly improve is to Read more »