To face the proverb's challenges, I set out to meet, learn from, and befriend remarkable professionals who share my passion to serve families. These friends and colleagues are too many to name here. Two of them, Susan and Keith, joined me in this effort to produce Complete Family Wealth, and with them I wrote two other books, The Cycle of the Gift (2013) and Voice of the Rising Generation (2014). We came together, over 10 years ago, at a time when I had started to doubt whether I had anything more to say. Our conversations opened new vistas to me of ideas and of hope. I came to see myself in the true elder role: not leading or doing but rather convening those who wish to learn and encouraging those who seek to act.
I am now in my 75th year of life and 50th year of practice. I am deeply humbled to see that, over the past 20 years, our little books have taken on lives of their own. They have done so—and I hope that Complete Family Wealth will do so—because you, the reader, will, I believe, find at least one suggestion here that will prompt you to have the courage to believe that the shirt sleeve proverb can be avoided. I believe it can!
A Welcome from Dr. Susan Massenzio
I was born into a family of second-generation immigrants to America. Resilience, hard work, and community were values that were woven into the fabric of my family as well as the families of many other immigrants.
I was fortunate to have loving grandparents and parents who led their lives with integrity and generosity. I learned at a very young age that money was a means to independence, choice, and the ability to be generous with people whom one loves. I was also gifted with good health, a good mind, and an adaptive attitude. I inherited much qualitative wealth.
My grandfather was very resourceful and made several good real estate investments, which he left equally to his four children. My father started a family business with his brother that had its share of success and hard times. I witnessed firsthand the realities of a family business: the challenge of succession without adequate planning, the conflicts that ensued, and the impact on the business created by spouses who married into the family.
My mother was a remarkable woman—she lived to be 101 years old—who decided to take on a second job as the family business was failing, to provide extra money to send me to college. Upon graduation, I worked in a state institution for children with special needs and then I transitioned to teaching special needs children in a public school. It was during my time teaching children with special needs who were living with their families that I saw the impact of having a child with special needs on the family. This experience prompted me to go on to graduate school with a focus on family dynamics.
For several years, I taught undergraduate and graduate courses in organizational psychology with a focus on the application of psychology to organizations and families. For most of my career, I have focused on the application of psychological theories and practices to positively impact leadership development in public and private companies, foundations, and families.
I believe that my professional journey has come full circle. It has gone from personal involvement with family business, to professional work with families with children with special needs, to corporate leadership, and then to families with the special need of wealth, to benefit family members and the communities of which they are a part.
What money I have, I have earned. I know the pride that comes from earning one's own money and the joy of being able to use it to help others. I have also been fortunate to have enjoyed the peace that comes from the sense of having enough.
In recent years, I have had the good fortune to work with two wonderful professionals: my loving partner, Keith Whitaker, and our dear friend, Jay Hughes. I have also been able to experience the joys and challenges of great corporate leaders and enterprising families with significant wealth. My hope is that I will be able to continue to have a positive impact on the lives of others through my own life experience, education, and commitment to cultivating qualitative wealth.
A Welcome from Dr. Keith Whitaker
My journey into this field began with my 17th birthday. I grew up in a middle-class home. I didn't think much about money; we didn't have too much or too little. Then, the afternoon of my birthday, my mother took me aside and said, “I want you to know that your grandfather has been very successful in business, so you can do whatever you like in your life.”
I remember feeling at the time that this was an odd comment. I already believed I could do whatever I liked, with or without money.
However, learning about my grandfather's financial success did make me feel different than I had before. I felt that more was expected of me. “To whom much is given much shall be required.” When I went off to college—which my grandfather paid for—I made a point of bringing him my transcript each semester, to show what I had achieved. With the gift, I felt a responsibility.
I also felt free—free to pursue a subject that truly interested me, classical philosophy, without focusing on my expected salary. I didn't have any student loans. I pursued a teaching career without the fear of being destitute.
These are some of the positive elements of the experience of learning about family wealth at an early age. But I found that there are also negatives.
For example, the flip side of freedom is a sort of lightness. This is a sense that no matter what I did, I could make up for bad choices or not deal with the frustrations that most other people face. For example, I loved philosophy but not the many tiresome parts of the job of teaching, and so I left it. Since that time, I do have some regrets, which money can't eliminate.
The flip side of feeling special is that you can become a mark. People with money often fall in with others who seek them out for their money. I was taken advantage of at times, and it was deeply hurtful.
The flip side of feeling gifted is entanglement. As a recipient, I felt I should give a return to my family by taking on various responsibilities around wealth management, trusteeship, service on the foundation board, and so on. These responsibilities took up a lot of time, taking me away from sorting out my own dreams. While I learned much from this work, it was not my true calling. It took a long time for me truly to become my own person.
When Jay invited me to join him in this journey, I knew that we would make excellent partners. We share the classic understanding of financial capital as a tool to pursue the ultimate qualitative goal: the inquiry into and the practice of living well.
The same is the case with Susan, whom I invited to join me in the journey of work and life over a decade ago. Little did I know then that I would learn from her that our true resources are our hearts and minds, and that our greatest gift is time, used well.
The Path Ahead
To orient you in this journey, we have organized the book into four main parts:
Part One (Chapters 1, 2, and 3) lays out the subject matter under discussion, the “what.” They address what we mean by family, wealth, and enterprise.
Part Two (Chapters 4 through 11) discusses the host of roles crucial to family enterprise flourishing. The “who” includes the rising generation, parents, grandparents, spouses, elders, trustees, and beneficiaries,