Episode Description:
In this episode, host Elizabeth Ledoux is joined by Josh Kanter, CEO and founder of leafplanner, a wealth advisory company that enables families to apply a family office perspective to optimize their impact. Tap or click the play button below to listen to: Preparing Heirs & Optimizing Your Family’s Impact with Josh Kanter, CEO of leafplanner.
Elizabeth and Josh discuss his decades working in his own family office and as an advisor to other families and family offices, the need to connect legacy planning and estate planning, plus Josh’s leafplanner program that helps families capture, collect, map, and share their information for future generations.
In this episode, Josh mentions the following previous episodes:
The Greatest Wealth Transfer: Ensuring Success in Family Business Transition, with Doug Johnson: https://bit.ly/BTR-Doug-Johnson
The Role Of Emotional Intelligence In Ensuring Successful Business Transitions, with Marcy McNeal: https://bit.ly/BTR-Marcy-McNeal
Wealth Transition Planning, with Brannon Fisher: https://bit.ly/BTR-Brannon-Fisher
Connect with Josh Kanter on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshua-kanter/
Website for leafplanner: https://leafplanner.com/
Follow leafplanner on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/leafplanner/
Connect with Elizabeth Ledoux and the Transition Strategists:
Website: https://transitionstrategists.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thetransitionstrategists
Elizabeth on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elizabethledoux/
Transition Strategists on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/transitionstrategists/
Subscribe to “The Business Transition Roadmap with Elizabeth Ledoux” on your favorite podcast player:
Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3MxSYA2
Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3IhMMux
Google Podcasts: https://bit.ly/BTR-Google-Podcasts
Get Elizabeth Ledoux and Laura Chiesman latest book, “It’s A Journey: The MUST-HAVE Roadmap to Successful Succession Planning”: https://amzn.to/3oq2LQv
This episode was produced by Story On Media & Marketing: https://www.successwithstories.com.
Preparing Heirs & Optimizing Your Family’s Impact with Josh Kanter Transcript
Josh Kanter: and the realization of how much I didn’t know when he died, shocked me to a degree that I don’t even know how to explain it. And so the the millions of dollars we spent on merely administrative kind of details of trying to figure everything out and trying to find everything and trying to understand everything that and I’m the again, I’m the trained lawyer in the family. So what does my artist sister do? What does my venture capital brother do all smart people, but there wasn’t another me who and my mom was frankly clueless about all this. So it was really kind of a it really let started this path for me of understanding what how do you really think about this information? And so now, I think that, again, we’ve made such great strides in this idea of preparing heirs, but we don’t have the tools yet.
Elizabeth Ledoux: Welcome to the business transition roadmap. My name is Elizabeth Ledoux. And through my years, I have seen how communities thrive. When business succession and transition are done. Well, me and my team at the transition strategists have been helping business owners develop and implement transition strategies for over 30 years. And on this show, we want to help you by giving you the roadmap to a healthy business transition. Let’s get started. Hi, everyone, and welcome back to the business transition podcast. I am just so fortunate today to be with Josh cancer. He’s an amazing person that I’ve gotten to know over the last few years. And he has, through his passion, built a program called leaf planner that we’re going to learn a little bit about today, and also talk a little bit about creating more impact in your legacy. So Josh, welcome to our podcast today. I’m just thrilled to have you here.
Josh Kanter: I’m thrilled to be here, Elizabeth, thanks for having me on such a big fan of yours and what you’re doing. So it’s it’s great. Thank you. Awesome.
Elizabeth Ledoux: Awesome. So Josh, how about we start with a little bit about your journey, and about the why behind what you’re doing right now?
Josh Kanter: Sure. I don’t want to I guess go too deep, or we’ll use our whole time talking about my journey, because it’s I can get carried away with it and happy to go into more detail at some other time. But as a lawyer in Chicago, as these things happen, as you well know, I ended up stepping into really helped my family and really come into a family office position at the very unexpected death, although we had a little bit of time to prepare for it, but unexpected death of my father 20 something years ago, which was really a pivot for me, and not at all something I intended to do. I’m one of these few people who actually liked being a lawyer. So it was a big decision to have to give up being a lawyer and come help my family. So basically, I’ve spent the last 20, almost 25 years in the family office world and as an advisor to other families and family offices primarily around legacy planning, as you’re talking about not really in the true estate planning sense. But really philosophically, what is legacy planning all about? And how do you translate that into estate planning which estate plan or estate planning lawyers, I would argue are not necessarily really good at doing. And then also really thinking about family governance, family dynamics, the transitions that really occur in families of wealth and how you think about that across generations. And we find our as an outgrowth of all of that. I don’t want to pitch leaf miner to heart but we’ll get into I’m sure what kind of information we planners encouraging people to capture and collect and map and share and do all these things. When we talk about preparation of errors and some of the things that obviously you touch on in the podcast in your business with with families. So we’ll get into that. But leaf planner is just a tool to help families with that process.
Elizabeth Ledoux: That’s awesome. That’s awesome. I’ve always been impressed with kind of the why behind leaf planner, because so many families have so much information. And I know that we’re not going to dive deep into leaf planner and what it is, and it’s the focus is not on that today. However, I think the things that you’ve experienced as a successor, right? Because that would be you are the successor and you know, really changed your world to take over when that unexpected death of your father happened. But also you’ve got that experience. And so in me getting to know you, I know that that was some of the foundation of why that’s here is to help families get through that. And we were talking earlier as we were preparing that the generation that is basically the baby boomer generation, some of that is pretty quiet sometimes about how they talk about their wealth, and what they pass on and how quickly they do it. So there’s for the successor not always a lot of information of it. ailable right? Yeah,
Josh Kanter: it’s um, you know, first of all, obviously, in this whole, whatever people want to call it, the great wealth transfer that’s coming. I know you and Doug just talked about that, man recently, and we have this huge wealth transfer, obviously, coming between the problem, I guess it’s primarily the baby boomer generation, unfortunately, I’m at the very 1962. So I’m very much at the tail end of the baby boomers. So I kind of have that label on you at the moment. And I think, you know, interestingly, I hopefully you’d agree with this, I think the industry, however, you want to find the industry, right has moved has made great strides in last 25 or 30 years from kind of that old secret of patriarchy says everybody will find out when I’m dead, whatever they need to know, to a much more open process or transparent process of preparing heirs, and really thinking about what preparation of heirs means and how to share stories and how to share information and when to do it. And everybody still struggles with it. And obviously, you and Doug is Tiger 21 chairs, you know, a typical Tiger 21 member is is constantly focused on how do I start to educate my kids? How much information do I share? How do I not ruin my kids? All those big questions, but at least they’re having that conversation. And that’s, you know, that’s, I think your point, right? That’s the conversation that 25 years ago, the leaders of the senior generation weren’t having. And there’s been a lot of work done, obviously on that about talking about how that wealth transfer can be a meteor strike to people who are all the sudden, you know, getting it or that that beneficiary trustee relationship is like a shotgun wedding, because the first time they’re actually engaging with each other is, you know, at that at that moment of horrible transition, down plan transition, typically, right. And so I think that the whole idea of capturing information and thinking about succession and transition, in an information sense, not just in a, who’s going to take over this position, but in a sense of what’s the information they’re going to need, and how do I share that and all these things. So for me, by the way, back to my story, when my dad passed away, he had been a world renowned tax lawyer represent a kind of a who’s who of corporate industrial America, his fingerprints are everywhere, on everything that happened in that whole era, from the 60s to the early 80s. And everything that happens in estate planning today, you can find my dad’s fingerprints on so like monumentally influence influencing source I guess, on on everything we all know, is estate planning. And I had 18 months with him before he died. So it was unexpected. But the good news was, it wasn’t like heart attack or unexpected. It wasn’t bus unexpected, right? It was, yeah, cancer unexpected. And he was 70. So he was still young, at least now for you and me, that seems really young. And so I was, you know, fortunate to have that 18 months with him. And I’m a trained lawyer, and I could give up my job, and I could come work for my family full time. And I could have, you know, all these things. And the realization of how much I didn’t know when he died, shocked me to a degree that I don’t even know how to explain it. And so the the millions of dollars, we spent on merely administrative kind of details of trying to figure everything out and trying to find everything and trying to understand everything, that and I’m the again, I’m the trained lawyer in the family. So what does my artist sister do? What does my venture capital brother do all smart people, but there wasn’t another me who and my mom was frankly, clueless on all this. So right, it was really kind of it really let started this path for me of understanding what how do you really think about this information? And so now, I think that, again, we’ve made such great strides in this idea of preparing heirs, but we don’t have the tools yet to really think about how do you do that. And so again, a big part of my mission and life has been to talk about making sure families don’t go through some of the things that I went through. And, and look, I understand obviously, at a very specific level, our family is, you know, quote, unquote, unique in the sense of what we had to go through. But all of this rhymes, right. Every family has their transition problems and stories. And whether it’s conflict in the family, or our case was we were filing 750 tax returns a year, and nobody knew why it’s so like, you know, things that we all have to deal with. So that’s kind of been my mission to talk about, how do you think about all of this information? How do you transfer it? How do you share it? How do you how do you even know what it is? And you’ve talked about in some of your prior podcasts, you know, families typically, I’d say, or wealth creators, let’s say that wealth creators are head down, building their business doing building their wealth, and that’s what they should do if that’s what they’re passionate about. And so the expectation that they should know anything about transition, which is why you exist or succession of information, which is kind of why I exist, right? But it’s it’s an unrealistic expectation that they Should even know what those things are, and how to do them. So it’s really important that we help people understand these are the things they should be thinking about.
Elizabeth Ledoux: That’s right and help them and I love that helped them to basically tackle this while they’re still ready and prepare it so that people can come in because I know just, it doesn’t really matter if you have 750 tax returns that you’re filing, or, in my opinion, this is my opinion, or you have a small business or a smaller amount of wealth. Right? It could be just stocks, bonds, real estate, some homes, those kinds of things. Your successors when they’re coming in? They typically aren’t they have never done that before, or are not very well versed in doing that. So as simple as you know, what’s a triple net lease, we’ve had clients where they have a building, and the building provides income, and they’re passing it along. Well, the building technically is a business, just in and of itself. It’s you know, got an LLC, it’s, it’s there. And, yeah, the successors, they don’t know what a triple net leases, they don’t know about leases, they don’t know how to build them, they don’t know how to, you know, deal with taxes, they don’t know how to use that asset, maybe for some tax, shelter, all the things that go around that. And that’s just a really simple example. So I’m a big believer in education and help having that wealth creation generation help the next generation figure it out. And the tool that you have built is, I think, incredible. So why don’t you just in two minutes, just tell us? What is leaf planner? And why why did you build it? What’s it supposed to do for people?
Josh Kanter: Yeah, so it’s, it’s really kind of a core piece, I’d say, of this transition. And you’ve talked about this before in the pat on the podcast between the transition from kind of the family business to the business of the family, and whether that’s to the family office, or whether you think of it just as the business of the family. And I think that people sort of need to understand that when you’re in that transition to the business of the family. That’s a whole nother business. You’ve talked about this before. And I love it, because that is a whole business that requires investment, it requires knowledge requires different skill sets than it did to have the business of the family business. And so leaf planner is really kind of a piece to help people think about what is that information? How do you do all the things that you just mentioned, you know, maybe not quite down to the detail of how do you explain what a triple net lease is? Usually only real estate lawyers know what that is. So there’s really kind of four components of what we’re trying to help families with. One is really an education and empowerment component. And that empowerment piece or education piece, both of those to me are really important because, again, families might go through an exercise of having a family meeting and telling family members something. But that’s that’s a one point in time. And this whole idea of running a family, I say I keep telling families is its long term work, you have to be dedicated to it, it’s, it’s another job, then we have kind of this workflow management piece that’s really about helping you think about things that may otherwise fall through the cracks. So if you’ve got sophisticated estate planning that has grant payments, or installment notes, or you know, you talked about triple net leases, and if you go you guys probably in Colorado know the whole story of the Park City mountain lease that didn’t get renewed on time. And so that triggered a sale of Park City to Vail and so you know, these things are important. And sometimes they fall through the cracks, even at that huge level, we’ve got kind of this blind spot identification component to it. That’s really helping families think about things they don’t even know they should be thinking about. Or that should be, they may knew they may have known, they should be thinking about but they didn’t take care of it. And then again, the primary purpose of this is kind of that whole succession of information piece. And when you see what the planner does, I’d say, it’s really important to think of it as almost a mind map if if you and your reader your listeners kind of know what a mind map is. So think about really kind of what is that whole enterprise an architecture and purpose look like? And so you might see a trust, but you’re gonna see, okay, who are all the parties to this trust? And why was this trust created? And why was Josh chosen as the trustee? And what does this this trust has an account at Northern Trust, or this trust owns my house or this and, and you’re going expanding or narrowing in on every piece of information? You know, I talk about when I show people with this is my wife wouldn’t know anything about why we have mortgages on our two homes and what which one she should pay off if I’m not here versus the other one. And so you’re capturing all this detail, or I know this is a podcast, but you can see this painting behind me. Why is this painting important? Me Well, it hung in my dad’s office, and now it hangs in my office. So you know you talked to a lot about emotional intelligence with Marcy Neil on one of your programs, and I loved it. Because that kind of that’s part of that transition. I have I jokingly now say, I have one nice watch. And I have two sons. I don’t know what I’m going to do about that. How do I do that? Right? We don’t have any daughters. So I don’t know who’s getting all the jewelry from my wife side. But it’s really, you know, again, it’s, it’s, there’s the complicated business side, there’s that understanding that triple net lease, and there’s that? How do I understand the emotional piece of what did my mom and dad do? Why did they do it? What should I know about it? And, and I think if we typically think about what lands families on the front page of The New York Times, or The Wall Street Journal, you know, it’s that family division, it’s that lack of knowledge and communication, because nobody’s talked about it. And so all of a sudden, it’s like, well, why Why did mom and dad name you as the trustee? Or why mom and dad make you the executor? Or why, you know, whatever. So we’ve kind of Yeah, yeah. And so we’ve planted at the core of all that, how do you answer all those questions and share it with your family in a really comprehensive and holistic way?
Elizabeth Ledoux: Which is great. It’s great, because, well, a couple things come to mind. One, my aunt, my aunt, Kay, we were moving out I, I live, my parents bought a small ranch. And there’s an old old old farmhouse, I lived in it for about nine years, redid it had a wonderful time there. And built in 1905. And we were moving out. And my aunt was there. And she we had this blackboard. And she goes, she just took a piece of chalk on the blackboard, it was Blackboard paint on the wall. And she just said, never forget your roots. Right? Never forget your roots. And I carry that with me so often. Because I think that it’s that emotional piece that if you don’t know what your roots are, and your parents haven’t ever transferred that information to you. I think that that’s a big deal. Like, you’d want to know where you came from, and why and what’s the why behind it. Because it’s the foundation for how the business is going to work for the family. So you know, the family business turns into the business of the family. And in that transition, and you talked about it, Josh, in that transition, there’s a change from being a family over here to the new culture of not only keeping the family whole, right, because we love the family, we want to keep that as whole as we can, but also creating these new business relationships. And there’s a new business culture a new way of working together, that’s different than Hey, brother, Hey, sister, you know, let’s go have Christmas and go play together or go do something together. There’s the how are we making decisions on these assets? How are we working together to do that, even if there’s a short period of time, where they have to work together until the assets can be separated, right, because they may be separated at some point in time. But some families ended up either being tied together because of the parents and the way they did their estate, or they end up being choosing to be together. Those are two different things. They end up being tied together, or they choose to be together. And hopefully it’s both, that would be the best scenario. But yeah, just the idea of how do you create that new business culture and methodology that you’re going to work with. And then part of that is, I’ve been reading and studying psychological safety. And in order to have psychological safety, you have to have one, you have to be included. So if you’re included in the estate, then you’re there. Second, you have to feel safe to learn. Third is safe to contribute. And fourth stage is safe to challenge. And so many of the people we talked about it earlier, that are the successors don’t even feel safe to learn. They feel they’ve they’re afraid because they don’t know enough and they should know more. And I think that the tool that you built, helps people to have access to information about the family and about the assets, which takes a step in the right direction. They’re
Josh Kanter: important. Yeah, I think that safety comment is so important. And, you know, I look at our own family again, and I’ll pick on my sister I love her dearly. So I hope it’s okay. I’ll pick on her a little bit. She’s an artist and, and she but she has a seat, for example, on our family’s Investment Committee. And she spent years on nonprofit boards and sitting on investment committees intentionally so she could learn that skill. And she uses frankly, a completely different language than the rest of us who have kind of legal and finance backgrounds. But she is an active I mean she’s got she had the safety to go learn how to do it. She had the safety to ask those Russians, and she’s now to your various steps there. She’s an active challenger of the decisions that are getting made. And it’s awesome. Right? And it has to be that psychological safety that you’re talking about. And there’s so many things packed into what you said a minute ago. I mean, I think about, you know, some of the things that you talked about with Brandon Fisher about the family asset doesn’t necessarily have to stay the family business, right? Obviously, that could be liquidated and it becomes a investment portfolio. And then you’ve got different governance issues, which obviously you also talk about frequently on the governance side, and how do people come together those and make those decisions? And and what’s the theory? You know, it goes back even to a state planning, I’d say it goes back to this philosophy of how much do you want to be ruling from the grave? I think you and Doug talked about that a little bit. And, you know, my parents, for example, made it very clear, we have zero intention of ruling from the grave. And yet everything was a state plan down to kind of the minut detail, but not in a restrictive sense. It’s really interesting, I look at what I read what I now realize, and it’s only in the last couple years that I’ve realized this, that I look at what everything my father did, in terms of creating the estate plan, in a very tax efficient manner, like wildly tax efficient manner. But it’s got so much optionality in it, which is the word I like to use around this. Because it basically I look at it now and say, the biggest gift I think they left us other than a pile of money was the ability essentially, to take this as a blank canvas and paint are on landscape. And that’s pretty cool. Like there was this, even though it’s all a state planned, and it’s all in, you know, structures that other people might look at and say, Oh, that’s very restrictive. The under underneath, it is such a level of optionality and creativity, that it again, like we’ve all and by the way, then the three branches of our family, to your point have chosen to stay together, we could have split everything up and say, hey, everybody go their own way and do what they’re going to do. And we basically have been a financial asset, family, our entire kind of existence. And so it was never there was never splitting up the family business. But that all gave us the opportunity to learn together and to share together and to make that decision to stay together. Yeah,
Elizabeth Ledoux: and the cool thing too, goes to my heart, is it gave you the opportunity to have experiences together, right, because I think so many families by not taking the opportunity to have conversations ahead of time, and to really pass along some of those stories and the roots and, and all of that, and the learning about the why and and how I think they missed the opportunity so often, to be together and have experiences together and enjoy each other. I know a lot of families don’t enjoy each other, but most of them get along pretty well. Yeah. And
Josh Kanter: this is you spent, I think, importantly, to write helping families educate their family members about this transition of roles and responsibilities that you were describing, right, because now you’re going from being brother and sister or cousins, or whatever it is to being shareholders or beneficiaries, or trustees, or LLC managers, or, you know, whatever, whatever these things are. And those are different roles. And even families need to learn how to take that hat on and off, and put the hat on and say I’m talking to you as my sister, or my brother or my cousin, or I’m talking to you as a fellow shareholder. Because those are very different conversations. And we’re likely to use very different language. And if the person at the receiving end of that doesn’t understand I’m talking to you as as a partner, not as my sibling, then how is that going to be misinterpreted? If they don’t understand that, the difference in those roles? So it’s all it’s so fascinating. It’s so fun.
Elizabeth Ledoux: It’s so fascinating. And Josh, that is it. That is a terrific, terrific point. Because yeah, in, in my experience, that’s when conflict really does happen is when you got two different people coming at it from two different hats, if you will, right? The way that you explain that. And they’re coming at it from two different perspectives, and they don’t talk the same language. And, again, going back to the idea of the culture and how the interactions work, what’s okay in the family many times is not okay, in the business setting. And so there’s confusion that happens there. There’s no poor intent, typically. It’s not that they woke up in the morning and said, Hey, I wonder how I can really do FIP my brothers or sisters day today and make them upset. They don’t do that. It’s just that there’s a misunderstanding, because of their perception and where they’re coming from. Yeah, great point.
Josh Kanter: You know, I think so many of these things, unfortunately, either aren’t taught, right. And families again, don’t know. They don’t know these things. Right. There’s I mean, I didn’t know these things. 25 years ago, I’ve learned these things over 25 years because I’ve been a student of this industry. For 25 years, so right, as you have, right, it’s hard, how do you know these things? And so there’s that. And then there’s the further complication that typically, everybody’s thrown into these new roles. And everything else, again, is as by death. And so all of a sudden, you know, what’s the whole thing that you’re not supposed to make any major decisions, while you’re grieving for like a month, or whatever that psychological thing is? I mean, I’m sure you’re not it’s like I just but and, and yet, here, we’re asking people to make some of the biggest decisions to have some of the biggest conversations that they’re ever going to have, at the worst possible time. And we haven’t prepared them to have those conversations. So and we haven’t given them the tools and the information, hence, back to leaf planner to some extent, but if we don’t give them that skill set, it’s just we’re doing them such a disservice. And that’s really unfair when you really care about your legacy. And when you really care about undoing Why did you build all this wealth? I mean, sometimes it’s just because it happened, right? But sometimes it’s actually, you know, you really feel strongly about the purpose. And if you can’t share that purpose and that legacy with the next generation, or it gets or you have shared it, but then it gets ruined, because they’re not on the same page, or they don’t know how to communicate, or they don’t understand it, then that’s kind of on on us as that senior generation at this point, right? Or whoever it is. That’s transitioning.
Elizabeth Ledoux: Yeah. Yeah. And, again, my belief, our belief is that the person who’s responsible for the transition going well, is the is the wealth creator, it’s the one or the wealth holder, right? The one who is transitioning out, because the successor will not come in and push and dig. And you know, that just doesn’t happen. Because they have respect, and they’ve been taught respect over the years. And so it really is the person who’s transitioning, it’s their job to engage lead, like they’ve led in the past, but into different territory that they’re unfamiliar with sometimes or don’t really, really no, so yeah, absolutely. For sure. So, Josh, as you see families doing this, what have you seen that is a Vegas best practice that we can share with our audience and listeners today? What what’s worked for families that you think is great?
Josh Kanter: Well, I think the the biggest thing, I’d say, you know, to some extent is, first of all, get on this as early as you can, right? I mean, transitions, and succession shouldn’t start, when you’re all of a sudden, saying, Oh, I think in the next 18 months, I want to transition out of this business or out of this role, or whatever it is, first of all, how many of us really get the chance to make that deliberative decision. And it isn’t caused by a heart attack or a bus or something else. So start as early as possible, I argue to people, there’s it’s never too early. It’s never too early to start, you know, sharing values and legacy with kids, like literally never too early. There’s ways you do that with toddlers, let alone you know, certainly by the time people are teenagers and young adults. The benefit of facilitation, I’d say I’m working with people like you or me or whoever on different aspects of this. I just can’t under underestimate its value. You know, it’s very hard, it goes back to those hats, right? It’s very hard for mom and dad, to also be objective leaders have a process where they have to be active participants in the process. And so I think it’s very rare that families successfully have a family member who leads that kind of discussion. So especially as you start thinking about family meetings, and, and sharing information that having a facilitator of some kind, is, you know, wildly helpful. I really hope people think about this idea of optionality. That is they construct trust agreements. And you know, you and I saw each other last at ppi. And right, obviously, that’s what that whole organization is designed around is, in some respect, thinking about leading with the heart, not just the tax minimization, kind of ideas and things like that. And so thinking about optionality, because what you think about you your life in your kid’s life today is not going to be what you think about it five years from now, let alone 10 or 20 years from now or two generations from now. And so, again, I’d say that goes back to, you know, my view of our family and our our parents leaving us this opportunity to paint our own landscape. Yeah, and just share I mean, I think this whole notion of thinking about what are the tools you want around you to prepare your family, your advisors, and it’s not just family, right, think about we all have trustees involved in this. We have executors built into this. There’s, these are complicated structures. And you know, and you’ve got to think about those people to do they share your values. Do they know what they need to know? That could be the power of attorney holder that could be the trustee. That could be the executor that could be the new adviser. So thinking about how you’re going to capture this information, whatever this information is, I mean, obviously, again, leaf planner does it in a particular way, but how do you capture this information and share it with everybody that you need to share it with? And those I think those, those different things lead to the real success of kind of these multi generational wealth transfers. Camp.
Elizabeth Ledoux: Yeah. And, you know, one thing that it’s a frightening, I think it’s a frightening thing, to be wandering down the road, and you’re building and wealth building and doing things and you’re active. And then all of a sudden, to start to think about bringing other people in, what might happen, thinking about a client of ours? What might happen? What might their perceptions be of your choices and your decisions? In how you want to transfer? And how, you know, what might be their perception of equality, fairness? the why behind it, who you’re including all of those different things up to an including who gets the watch. It’s like, hey, let’s just not talk about who gets the watch, because I don’t want to deal with that. I’ll let them deal with that later. Right. Right. It’ll be their problem, not mine, because I don’t want to ruffle feathers or, or make anybody upset. And so you know, I’m just gonna let that one be over here. But I think that the idea of tackling that and having those conversations, it’s there’s a lot of fear there. But there’s also a lot of goodness there. And so, really,
Josh Kanter: you know, I think that, exploring that, and I’m gonna use that watch as a stupid example. But it’s such it’s such a funny little microcosm, I could solve that problem myself. Right? I can go out and buy another watch. Sure, I solved that problem. And I solved the problem without ever talking to my two sons. Or I could talk to my two sons and say, Hey, guys, here’s the situation, what do you want to do about it? And maybe they have a solution. Maybe one of them couldn’t care less about the watch, right? And so to your point about that, that business person and having their quest, their decisions question, it’s really hard for that person to engage everybody else in a conversation. But if they’re willing to engage everybody else in the conversation, you’re going to learn shocking that and that maybe you learn something that there’s real conflict, or there would be real conflict. But maybe you learn that there is no conflict, or that people think of it in a very, very different way. I really quick story, I ran a family meeting for a family a few years ago. And when we were doing a values exercise. Everybody in the family chose tradition as kind of a core value. And the mom started crying really hard. Of course, I always say if I if I’m successful at running a family meeting, somebody’s gonna cry, and somebody’s gonna laugh. But so I was like, okay, good sucks. And we were all like, why are you crying? And she said, Well, I feel like I haven’t done enough to build tradition around Thanksgiving or Christmas, or this or that. And the kids were like, No, and these are young adult kids. And they were like, no, no, no, what we mean is that every time we come home from college, we all go out together, we go to the same restaurant, we like, share these traditions, and tradition meant something different to all of them, but it was wildly important to all of them. And you’d never know that if you don’t communicate about it. And so, yes, I think it’s just you know, especially for the generation that is the entrepreneur, the wealth creator, who is used to kind of being in battle by themselves. It’s a hard transition to a much more open, transparent and, and collective decision making process or even conversation. But it’s absolutely,
Elizabeth Ledoux: absolutely and there’s a there’s so much discovery, exploration, fun, learning, connection, all of those good things. And, you know, to get through the fear, that’s you have to say, hey, there’s going to be connection and some good stuff over here. Otherwise, you just don’t want to do it. Emotionally and as human beings, we try to avoid those things. So yeah. Wow. So some great conversations here, Josh, and we are at our time, so I have to move us forward. But I just have so enjoyed talking with you and appreciate your transparency and openness with us. Always ask at the end. What is one thing that you would like to leave with our listeners, for them to take away and really think about?
Josh Kanter: I guess, I guess the biggest thing for me is start these conversations wherever they are, start them early, and have them and be open to communicating with your family because it’s that to me Is the if there’s one key success between difference between success and failure, it’s communication. Absolutely.
Elizabeth Ledoux: All right, Josh. Hey, thank you so much. So, yeah, anybody who wants to know more about leaf planner, that information will be in the podcast, you know, in the trailer here. So yeah, and thank you have a beautiful day and appreciate everything that you’ve done for us today. Thank you to take care. Thank you for listening to this episode of the business transition roadmap. If you’re listening to this and you find yourself wanting to go deeper into these topics and start the process of putting together your transition strategy. I’d love to offer you a free initial strategy session with my team, where we’ll help you to explore the future transition of your business, head over to www.transitionstrategists.com to schedule a call. Thank you again for listening. And I’ll see you on the next episode of the Business Transition Roadmap.
The Business Transition Roadmap with Elizabeth Ledoux
How do communities thrive? When businesses experience healthy growth and transition. Join CEO of The Transition Strategists, Elizabeth Ledoux as she and her guests identify what makes a successful business transition roadmap. If you know you want to transition or exit your business “one day”, today is the right day to start planning. This show will give you the roadmap.
