A Conversation with Jay Hughes and Martin Stepek

This episode is one of the most profound and far-reaching conversations we have ever shared on The Family Business Podcast. Joined by the legendary James E. Hughes Jr. and my colleague Martin Stepek, we explore the idea that wealth, at its deepest level, has always meant wellbeing, and that wellbeing itself is a powerful form of wealth.

What follows is a conversation that ranges widely yet remains grounded and practical. We delve into the origins of the word wealth, the anthropology of thriving families, the nature of aspiration and spiritual capital, and the lived realities of generational transition. Jay brings six decades of experience advising families worldwide, while Martin offers a deeply personal perspective from growing up in a complex multigenerational enterprise. Together, the conversation becomes a rare blend of wisdom, honesty, and humanity.

Across the hour, we discuss themes that lie at the heart of flourishing family enterprises:

• Why the original meaning of wealth still matters today

• How families can create environments where wellbeing is treated as a core asset

• The importance of joint decision-making and the shift required when a founder’s energy becomes a family system

• The five capitals and why financial capital is the least powerful without the others

• Welcoming, lineage, and the conditions that encourage rising generations to stay engaged

• How families can cultivate a culture of care, curiosity, and responsibility

• Why plays, not plans, may offer a better way to think about the future

This conversation is not technical. It is not formulaic. It is an exploration of what it means for families to thrive across generations, delivered with clarity, compassion, and occasionally breathtaking insight.

If you advise families, lead a family enterprise, or are part of one, this episode offers a chance to step back and reflect on the deeper forces that shape continuity, connection, and fulfilment. It is a reminder that family enterprise is, at its essence, a human endeavour.

A must-listen for anyone seeking to understand the true nature of wealth and the foundations of long-term family flourishing.

Well, hello everybody and welcome to this very special episode of the Family Business Podcast. I am beyond excited to be joined on the show today, firstly by my colleague Martin Stepek, but also by ⁓ a legend in the form of Jay Hughes, who has very kindly agreed to come on the podcast and talk to us about a very important topic, which we've referred to as wealth as well-being and well-being as wealth.

which feels like a very timely conversation. Those that have been listening to the show will know that we have created a program called The Path, which looks at the teachings brought to you through mindfulness. And Jay is a strong advocate for the cultivation of spiritual capital, which we'll dive into a little bit more during the show. But firstly, Jay, welcome to the show. It's a real honor to have you here.

And to give our audience, if any of them haven't heard of you, a bit of a background and introduction to yourself. Could you just kind of say hi and introduce who you are and what you do?

Hello and welcome to all of you and thank you for taking your time, which is your treasure, to share this time with us. Very briefly, I'm very privileged this morning to be with my colleagues, Russ and Martin, and discussing this very important aspirational question with you. I am a sixth generation lawyer in America. I've traveled to all the continents except Antarctica, helping families over 58 years.

And that's plenty about me. ⁓

you

Fantastic.

And we'll get into a little bit more about your work and what you've been doing as we progress. And Martin, again, listeners to the show should be familiar with you, but for those that aren't, perhaps give us a little bit of an introduction to you and your work.

Well, hi everybody, and it's going to be a bit challenging to meet Jays precise concise bio there. I'll do my best though. I was born into a family business, didn't want to join it. Eventually did join it. Did a law degree, didn't become a lawyer and and. After the family business, I set up a charity to help family businesses in Scotland.

but particularly about the emotional dynamics of being in family together. And at the same time, I found mindfulness and found it very helpful in terms of me managing the confusion and the emotions that were coming through that period in my life. And long story short, met Russ online about eight or nine years ago now, and we just hit it off and started exploring.

so many aspects of family business life, but the deeper and wider aspects of trying to be fulfilled in life while being in a family business or a member of a family that has a business.

Fantastic. And I'm really excited for the three of us to be having this conversation today. And to get us started, Joe, I've come to you in terms of the title for the episode today is Wealth as Wellbeing and Wellbeing as Wealth. So I'd be keen to understand your current definition of wealth and perhaps how this definition has either been shaped or has changed over the years as your thinking and research into the field has evolved.

Russ, thank you, and Martin, thank you. ⁓ I think it's no coincidence this morning that all three of us are still speaking Anglo-Saxon English. ⁓ It's very interesting to me to found in the dictionary only four years ago that the word wealth means well-being. It is two Anglo-Saxon words, we-alth. You can hear the word even then. And not surprisingly,

Sort of.

because our language is a very living language, it has meant well-being all through this period since probably the fifth century. What it meant before that, I don't know, but certainly we know that. What I think is tragic is that in the last 50 years, the word has been bastardized to financial capital or money or some species.

What a tragedy. Because to be given the gift that wealth is one's well-being, one's family's well-being, and one's society's well-being, is to be given an aspirational understanding of what wealth and your wealth means. I will add just a few words by saying that for about 30 years, and as I said, I've been at this a very long time,

I spent those 30 years in the middle of my career trying to find a different word than wealth because I knew it didn't mean to the families and to mean to me what it was being used to say. And I kept trying to find another word. Well, stupid me, I finally went to the dictionary, my aunt's dictionary, who was a poet that's sitting right here next to me.

I opened the dictionary, I looked at the word wealth, and of course I discovered it well being. What I would say, Russ and Martin, and to our wonderful audience, is that the consciousness of a lived life that creates wealth is the consciousness of well-being and being well. We could use the word in two contexts. And that immediately asks, is your family's

being well, is it experiencing well-being? And is the society of which you are a part being well and experiencing well-being? So late in life, you can always learn new things every day and the dictionary is a great teacher. I discovered that this word, precious word, I would use that word precious to define it, has been in our lingo and lexicon for all these hundreds and hundreds of years.

Martin, do you have any thoughts?

Well, first of all, that was a very beautiful introduction. ⁓

The word I sort of searched around this for not maybe as long as you, but maybe about 20, 30 years. And then the word fulfillment came to me about how do you and those are also two words as well. A full and filled ⁓ fulfillment is.

grabbing this opportunity of the precious life and making the most of it but completely concurred with you, you can't do it as a separate individual, you know, because you're not a separate individual. You rely on everything around you and one's happiness and well-being depends on another's and it's very difficult to be

fulfilled and content in life when around you is lacking that. And I've noticed that in my life, all through my life. But interestingly in a family business context, that then ties in for me with the fact that we, when you're born into a family business, you're born into a microcosm of a society that's part of a society.

which is part of a wider world. And very often you can be almost alienated from the wider world because you're so fixated about the family and the business. And it can be holding you back from the sense of wellbeing that we all really want in life. And I think that's for me, given my own life experience in the family business, one of the areas that really matter most to me is

How do you be well? How do you have wealth within a family business that is not impeded or not impeding your wellbeing within a wider context?

Yeah, and I'm curious as well, Jay, in terms of within your work and particularly within your exploration around that phrase and word of well-being, what does it look like when a family treats well-being itself as a form of wealth? Because there are misconceptions, there's these kind of societal expectations around the purpose of a business is to create wealth, which will automatically lead to people being happier.

or more fulfilled and I think the three of us know that that's not necessarily the case but I'm keen to understand again from your work what happens when families do treat well-being as a wealth in itself.

Well, let me see if I can offer.

relatively simple answer to what is one of the greatest complex issues we ever face. Many, many years ago, with a client in Singapore who awakened me,

Chinese gentleman asked me the question, how does his family avoid the shirt sleeves to shirt sleeve proverb in three generations? I said I didn't know, it had happened in my mother's family. ⁓

But I would go and study and six months later I went back to see him and I said, by the way, I don't have an answer. He was disappointed. I said, the problem is that every single culture that we know of has this proverb in some form. We could use clogs to clogs this morning, would be very acceptable to our English and British and Scots and Welsh and Irish audiences. ⁓

What is the proverb about? And this comes—I'm going to get the answer, Russ, this way. The proverb says that this universe that we live in, which is pure energy—I think we all agree upon that—with a very small amount of matter in it. Matter, of course, is still energy, but it is matter. What the proverb is saying is that someone takes energy and makes it matter into matter. That's the business. Or the

professional

or ⁓ even philanthropy, whatever it may be. So there's an action in which a human being does a very, very, triple, very unusual thing in a lifetime, take energy and make it matter. That's very, very unusual. Therefore, almost every family where that has happened is living in a very abnormal world. Isn't that interesting?

So the people that we see as our clients look normal to us, but in the eight and a half billion of us, they're among the most unnormal people on the planet. Now, that action itself is an extraordinary action. By the way, for poets, for those who love poets, it risks Ozymandias. It risks Percy Bear Shelley's great poem. You can look that up in the audience if you want to see what I'm talking about. But now comes a very interesting problem.

Now comes the second generation. I call it the rising generation. I hate next, by the way. Nobody wants to be next. So the rising generation, what's the problem of a family who's rising? The problem is it has to make joint decisions. wait a minute. Wait a minute. Joint decisions. Yes, it does. It has to make joint decisions. Most of the time, that remarkable person, who may have a husband or wife, ⁓

who create, takes energy and makes it matter does not make joint decisions. They make decisions, but they're anything but joint. But when you get to the second generation where family begins, in my opinion, in terms of the questions we're talking about this morning, you have to make joint decisions.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

On what basis do you make a joint decision? now this is getting very complicated. Please listen all very carefully. In a family that wants to experience well-being, each member must,

that's requirement, must agree to make every decision together in a way that enhances the other people's well-beings and lives in the system.

only hoping they'll help them, but you can't know that, can you? Can only know what you do. Can only know what you will do. So the secret of great families, and I mean those who reach the fifth generation and go on from there, is not how well the business did, which is after all an investment allocation question after the founder. You invest in this or that, it's not a sacred trust ever. But the core question is, can we make decisions together as a family

Hmm.

around this principle of enhancing each other's lives.

That's the core element for how these families thrive in wellbeing. And apologies for the length, but there's no way to answer that question without that many sentences. I can't anyway, but I'm sure somebody, you know, that wonderful statement, if I could have had more time to write a letter, it would have been shorter. Yes, I wish somebody would do it better than that, but that's the best I could do.

You

It's a fantastic ⁓ explanation and something that's really clear around the changing dynamics that happen as family members join business. As you say, a founder is generally used to having control and being able to make decisions and everyone going along with those decisions. When that becomes more democratized in terms ⁓ of

adding people to that mix, there can still be a temptation to go, okay, we've still got to make the same decision as the founder would have made, because that's how the business has got to where the business has got to. But I think what you're saying is focusing on that element of wellbeing and each other's wellbeing and that care that can exist within those environments will likely lead to successful outcomes and a life of fulfillment and flourishing. know I've

again, boil that down too simplistically, but as an ethos and kind of an emphasis.

One quick word you used that I know Martin will want to say something about. You have to live in a culture of care.

Care is an extraordinarily important virtue for a common community, no matter how large or small. So you use the word care and I'm picking up on it because I want everyone to hear that we're talking about creating a culture of care. Isn't that fascinating? And then of course, what do you care about? I care about your wellbeing. Yes, mine too. I'm selfish. I'm not being silly. I hope you'll care about mine.

Hmm. Yeah.

But again, existentially, I can't know what you'll do. I can only know what I will do.

Yeah.

Well, you mentioned Martin, I want to bring you into that element because I know Martin's background on family business sort of background and Martin's family from a first to a second generation business went from from mum and dad to 10 siblings. And when you're talking about a generational transition of learning how to do that, Martin, I'm intrigued as to your view because you've lived that experience. And I know you are part of a very caring, very loving family, but

Cough

What?

you

anyone that would be a challenge for anyone in terms of going from one or two decision makers to 10 plus probably spouses and partners. It's an interesting ⁓ maths equation there.

Well, absolutely. know, Jay, when you were talking about the entrepreneur, the founder, in such an abnormal scenario of life that is, and then all of a sudden you've got the generation that follows having to live an entirely different methodology. And when you were saying it, I thought, yep, that's my dad. That's our siblings.

Blessings

on him.

I mean, spot on, absolutely spot on. And I think that then raises one of the big challenges, you know, from my point of view. And as it happens, I'm also a published poet, you know, you'd mentioned poetry twice, so I've published five volumes of poetry. One of the things that struck me very early on in my adult life with relation to my own purpose in life and what I wanted to do with it. And I'm this a member of this thing called a family business is

Wow.

Where does poetry fit in? And when you're electrical goods, as we were, washing machines and televisions and things, know, poetry sort of doesn't slip in there so well. And so the whole idea for me of the prodigal son or the rebel or the outsider within a family context has always intrigued me. And I think from what you were explaining so well there, the

A family has to try to do what is best for each and all. And that, when you've got 10 as a sibling group, all married, and the spouses all have another view of life and purpose and what is wealth, then you've got 20 people to try to, the skill it takes to even get them to understand where they are, scenario.

let alone how to manage a process by which you're seeking to get the wellbeing of all through this process. And I think never having been just with one sibling, but I would guess it's a wee bit easier, but it's still very hard even with one sibling.

Martin, yes, and there's a key element to Marce's question and your beautiful response about your own family. Most people don't understand immediately that if they are not a welcoming family, they have no future. Exactly what you said. I'm just adding a little word to it. So if we're dealing with well-being,

and we're looking at how the family evolves, we have to look at the question of welcoming. And I have to tell you some of great conversations in my life have been with second generation and third generation families as they moved into the welcoming stage because it's absolutely the energy you have to have along with the natural energy and aspirations of the people. So there has to be individual aspiration cared about.

Who are you? What do you aspire to? That's spirit, by the way. Ad spiratu, true spirit. What do you aspire to? What inspires you? This is all spirit. And then the question is, well, am I able to be welcoming to your aspiration?

Thank

Because if I can, we might have a third and fourth generation. If I can't, probably not going very much longer. That spirit right there, aspiration. The Latin is again marvelous, isn't it? We just took two odd spirato from Latin and made it aspiration. The words are, for the poet, these words are the most meaningful thing. My aunt was a poet too, by the way, so I feel blessed this morning to be in the company of a poet. This is a...

you

Yeah.

This is a marvelous thing. Okay, Russ, back to you, I think.

Yeah, I think that's a really, really interesting point because if we look at, if we stay on the, say a generational transition, so let's just stick with the first to second generation transition here. And we're talking about having a caring view in terms of ⁓ attaining each other's aspirations. Part of that requires self-awareness as to what you

seek as a fulfilled life, which again is something I know Martin are very passionate about is what does a fulfilled life look like for you? And then how you then go about creating the conditions within your family to be able to articulate that and care enough about other people's viewpoints, including non-family. At a time where traditionally transition plans are focused on how do we best prepare somebody to come in and perform

a function within the business? How do we best do this? They're almost not at odds with each other, but they need to be looked at both together and separately if that makes sense. In terms of my view of, we need to be self-aware. We need to have much more focus on what it is that we want to do in life that makes us fulfilled, but not in an entirely selfish way that means I don't care about anybody else.

Yes, and I'm going to make a guess about my new friend Martin and you Russ. This is guess I'm going to make. The most important decision in the rising generation is who leads from behind, not leads in front. That the Chinese taught us that in 500 BC when Lao Tzu wrote his great book. That's family leadership and societal and cultural leadership.

Yep.

has nothing to do with running a business. In fact, it's probably all the skills you don't need to run the business. So here's a mistake that's made all the time. The person the father selects to run the business, he thinks will become the senior trustee of the trust. Terrible mistake. Because the trustee of the trust, if you remember, or the leader of the family, must make as a fiduciary, small f, this is the duty and loyalty and care,

must first make every decision on behalf of the other's interest before his own. You ever meet a businessman who could do that? It's not the right thing for the business. It's not being unfair. You need someone who believes in leading in front. Stimulate the customers, stimulate the workmen, do work in the world. ⁓ Entirely different qualities. So part of the aspirational question,

Russ is how do we know each other? Not only are we self-aware, but are we aware of how the other is? And by the way, when I was doing this actively for families, I'm now mostly retired, I did two things with a family when they asked me if I could help them. I said, okay, but you first have to help yourselves, of course. That's not my job. You have to do the job yourself. So the first thing is, I want you to find out how each of you learn.

huh.

really? Yeah. Uh-huh. And second, I want you to do Enneagram and find out your personalities. And now you have two foundational building blocks of human and intellectual capital, which build up toward your social capital, your joint decision-making, and finally your aspirations, your spiritual capital. But with those two building blocks, you know so much about each other. and by the way, I made the family officers, office executives, and trustees come and do it too.

Yeah.

because they're part of the system. Nobody gets

out in Jay's system. Everybody who's in the atmosphere of that family has got to show up because we're going to be in a joint decision-making system to get those aspirations, the spirits of each person achieved. And again, I'm not making any negative statement about who runs the business. What I'm trying rather to do is to help us in the audience see

⁓

Hmm.

The second generation's work is building a family that may have financial resources if its aspiration is to have a third, fourth, and fifth generation. If it doesn't care, it won't happen. The energy will go back. The matter will decay. It will go back to energy, and Mother Nature is happy.

Yeah.

It's easy. She said you just did the second law of thermodynamics. You just did entropy. You're wonderful. Good job. Except it's painful. Those bonds of the 10 or 20 separating, ay, yi, yi, is that painful? No, let's not do that. Let's build how we learn who we are, how we make decisions together, how we discover each other's aspirations.

Yeah.

Mmm.

and let's enhance each other's lives by helping them be achieved. And then the business, by the way, has a purpose. I'm sticking that in in the end, but it's hugely important. Now the business has a purpose. Grow human, intellectual, social, and spiritual capital of the family. ⁓ wow, that works, doesn't it?

Absolutely.

Yeah.

you

Yeah, and you mentioned there that the five capitals that you cover, there's a book that you've co-authored called Complete Family Wealth, which again, if the audience haven't read that book, please go and read it. It's a fantastic book. And in it, you introduce five capitals. I know you've just mentioned them there, but could you walk us through those in terms of what they are and also why they matter collectively rather than just individually?

Well, let me ask all the audience to listening to us to put up, put, take their right hands and put their thumbs up, wiggle their thumbs and close their fingers. Financial capital is now on top wiggling. And you notice there aren't any other capitals cause your fingers are gone. This is death. This is death. Fun, done, finished. You turn your hand upside down.

I'm doing it.

Thank

and the thumb is now pointing down and the four other fingers are pointing out, this is the journey. Because now at the top you have spiritual capital. This is the aspirations to grow each person's life in that system and enhance it. That's the spiritual journey of a great family. Next, you have to make joint decisions. This is social capital. I'm not talking about philanthropy.

I'm talking about the social system of that family making joint decisions. Next, you need intellectual capital or lifelong learning system. And finally, first finger, thriving human beings. Now let's go the other way. look, financial capital now has a purpose. Grow these. Grow the thriving human beings. Be a lifelong learning system together. Share what you learn.

Thanks.

make great joint decisions and help the spiritual aspiration of each person achieve an enhanced life. The focus must be on the four qualitative capitals, the four fingers. Not at the exclusion of the quantitive capital, but so that the qualitative capital has a high aspiration itself.

Mm-hmm.

which is to grow these so that the whole family has a third and fourth generation if that's what it wants. These capitals are immutable. They're how all human communities flourish or don't. If you don't have flourishing human beings, if you're not a learning system, if you're not making good joint decisions and you're not fulfilling the aspirations, guess what? You don't have a system. You have chaos.

Mm-hmm.

Hmm.

And Mother Nature smiles again. ⁓ they're back into energy. Good deal. It's not much fun. It's much more fun and much more purposeful to look at your capitals and say, what do we consist of? And how can we grow these? Together.

Mm.

Hmm.

Yeah.

together,

are we really curious about each other in this way? And Martin, I bet that's what the 10 of you do with a lot of ⁓ sparring too. ⁓

Can I just come in there just for a second? Last week, not earlier this week, I had a cousin's daughter come over from Australia for the first time to Scotland where the family came from. On my mother's side is Scotsman, Irish background. And we got four branches of the family, cousins, to meet with her. And we had the most...

Please.

beautiful day and it was all about everybody wanted what was right for everyone else you know and it was just it was out with a family business context but it was a family context and the whole purpose was to help this relatively young person about Rusty's age, ⁓ in her 40s come over first time she'd left Australia comes to Scotland to meet

Yes.

where her mother and her grandmother and grandparents came from. And we were all just saying, what can we show her to illuminate her own history? And that just made it absolutely blossom. And now if you can get that, that's back to your wellbeing of all and the sort of love and the care coming in. If you can get that in everyone, then...

Yes.

Thank

That's when it all flourishes. That's when it all becomes possible, your aspiration. And that to me is spiritual. ⁓ It's not selfless in the sense that it's not for you, it's for everyone.

and that works.

And Martin, feel how much energy you created in that wonderful experience that you gave her. As you and she experienced lineage. Lineage. This is natural. mean, many years ago, I went to a little town in Hesse near Göttingen in Germany where two of my great-grandfathers came from called Saatenhausen.

Absolutely.

350 people in a farming town and met my fifth cousins. And we felt as if we'd known each other all our lives. Even if we, so I'm German, some English, but no, because we were experiencing lineage. We were building energy. Yes.

Mm-hmm.

And I think that one aspect of what we've both talked about in terms of our stories is when you put the business into the equation, it brings a degree of complexity and potential rivalry that doesn't exist when it's purely family. And the ability for everyone to, people have to learn.

what wellbeing is. People have to learn what wellbeing of each other is. And some people have it maybe more inherently in them, genetically or through the upbringing. For other people, it's a big challenge. And I'm interested in how you try to shape that and bring people in. But I guess it's a lot to do with, if you buy into the wellbeing of all, then you will be the recipient as well.

Yes, yes.

Martin, yes. And what is missed, very sadly in modern society, is the role of elders.

who are our storytellers and our wisdom keepers. ⁓ By the way, elders can be 15 years old. We think of the Christ sitting at 12 having a conversation with the seniors. ⁓ That's just one image. I'm not asking people to be Christian. I'm just asking me, there's a great image. ⁓ The question of growing elders has fascinated me. All successful tribes, these are ones that are thousands.

years old have a process for growing and anointing elders. And these are the ones who are the ones who care about all. They're the nines on the enneagram or whatever, however one's find it. You can't make the journey as anthropology, social and cultural anthropology, teachers if you don't have elders. They're our storytellers and our wisdom keepers. They don't, they never tell us what to do, by the way.

Elders never tell you what to do, otherwise they're not elders. Elders ask us the one question we most don't want to be asked and shut up. ⁓ But I can see as we're discussing the natural way of families evolving. And here's a little bit of, I suppose this has got a little bit of a barb in it, not to the two of you, but to some of my professional colleagues.

⁓

You

In large rooms, Russ and Martin, when I used to go into large rooms and address them, and often it was lawyers and accountants and bankers and people that were interested in financial capital, I would ask them, how many of you took an anthropology course? Zero. The only science that speaks to human groups and how they form and how they work is anthropology. I didn't take it, I answer my question, put, I'm guilty too.

So what did I do years ago? I took a freshman anthropology course in writing. I got the books and I took the course. As I said, I have to understand how this family thing works. And as I was studying that, I realized all successful long-term human communities grow elders, anoint elders, respect elders, and the elders' tasks are very simple. By the way, we have rules. You're not following them.

.

So the minority is gonna leave if you don't fix it. We're not fixing it, but you gotta pay. and by the way, this is how we did it three times in the past when we were challenged. And by the way, don't look like you're doing five generation thinking right now. Aren't those wonderful questions?

Mmm.

So we have such rich awareness, but because the financial capital becomes the objective, we lose all the humanities.

Hmm.

As the eyes go to the money as wealth, inadvertently, and I mean that inadvertently, we lose all connection with the humane reality of what a family is and what its purpose is. We got to get our eyes back on the four qualitative capitals, back with the financial capital supporting them, and then all the rich literature of poetry, drama, life, anthropology become available to us.

Thank

It's such a tragedy to see the closing of minds, the closing of hearts as financial capital dominates.

Yep.

you

And

Mother Nature again is very happy. She's very happy. So that matters going back to energy fast. I don't have to spend any time over on this one. So back to you, Russ and Martin. Thank you. Go ahead.

Yeah.

It brings me back to, again, in terms of the cultivation of those four qualitative capitals, the challenge that can be faced when talking with, say, a founder whose desire to create something from that energy.

may have been motivated from them not feeling as though they had sufficient financial capital. It may be to solve a problem. There's different reasons people would set up a business. But it may almost feel very counterintuitive to them to say, look, we're not going to focus on the financial capital. We're going to look at these four qualitative elements. That in itself is a discussion amongst

family members. Again, in your experience of the combination of wanting each of us to succeed and for that to be a collective ambition for the families for us all to achieve what it is that we're aspiring to achieve, whilst also trying to shift the focus away from perhaps the ambition of a founder is to create wealth. Having those conversations can feel complicated. So how do you

sort of encourage families to have those conversations around, particularly around things like spiritual capital without it feeling anything away from being grounded. But also you mentioned about the religious element. Some people will hear spiritual capital as a religious capital and that's not what we mean here. So I'm just interested in your views on how we can suggest families kind of take themselves through these conversations without them feeling too abstract, if that makes sense.

So let's use some very practical ancient wisdom. The first thing I would say, Russ and Martin, is a beautiful saying that is true. You only know if you have a family when your mother dies.

I want to say it again, you only know if you have a family when your mother dies. I cannot tell you how accurate that proverb is. So the first thing is, what does mom think? Not what does dad think about these things. What does mom think about these things?

my goodness, is that important. And for female business ladies, it doesn't change. She's still mom.

The second thing is something that Freud said. I'm going to bring it here because I think it's very, very helpful. Freud is an old man after many years of trying to develop the idea of the unconscious, being a pioneer. Jung then had to come along and fix it. That's the trouble of being a pioneer. ⁓ But Freud got one thing incredibly right. He said,

that the happiest people—he used the word adjusted, but I'm going to use happiest because I think it's much more accessible—were those who learned to love. Look at that. Three words. Learned to love. Heartbreak, broken, helps you learn to love. And then he said, and learned to work. And by that he meant vocare, the Latin, calling, not labore, labor. These, he said, are the two ingredients

for happy life, learning to love and learning to work. So I always say to the families and to the founders and everybody else to answer your question, do we know that about each other? ⁓ that's very interesting. Yeah, we could know that about each other. Then he went on to say something even more profound. He said the two great interrupters of happiness are sex, which he included gender, and then comes the big one and money.

and money was the worst because no nice person would speak about it. ⁓ did he know human beings? Wow. As I wandered around the world, Russ and Martin talking to groups and I would tell them Freud.

And then the audiences would titter when I got to the money thing. They would titter. That's a funny word. They didn't laugh. They saw the irony because they couldn't talk about money. And I said, you know, the problem you have is I'm going to be with you for an hour talking about money and it's a conversation you can't have with me. Well, then they were fascinated. Because here we are talking about four cap, five capitals.

you

this question you've raised about financial capital being a goal and an aspiration, which is fine, by the way. Freud was not saying aspiring to make money is wrong or right. What he was saying is that once you have it, you can't talk about it. And by the way, the whole purpose and process of helping a family unlock how it loves and how it works, by the way, miracle of miracles, mirabile dictu, they can talk about money.

Because now they're talking about how the money integrates into the love and into the welcoming, that's the family, welcoming, loving family, and the vocation question. What are my dreams? What are my aspirations? How can the financial capital help me with my vocation? See the process? But isn't Freud remarkable? Learn to love, learn to work, sex, gender, and money, and money is the worst because no nice person will. Where is he? Dead right.

Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Hmm.

Now, let me say one more thing on this, because I don't want to drone on.

with founders with whom I have huge affection and by the way enormous respect someone again abnormal coming back to very beginning of our time together who takes energy and makes it matter when you interview that person about his life I'll say his but it certainly could be her life they don't talk about how much money they made they talk about the creative curious curiosity

that brought them or the difficult circumstances in which they found them. look at, ⁓ I was thinking of another good Scott Martin who came to America because his father lost his job as a weaver at the beginning of the 19th century, Carnegie. Yeah, and how did he make his living? He found that he was really good running the messages fast. He was faster than the other boys.

Come, thank you.

And so the boss said, well, look, do you know how to type? So he became a key operator on the telegraph and everything went from there. Curiosity compelled him to make a living, his family, and go into America because there was no place for them in Scotland at that point. But the point is he wasn't talking about how much money he made. He's the wealthiest man in the world. He's wealthier in Rockefeller. We wouldn't talk about that. Then he wrote a great paper, by the way, about a man dying rich was the worst thing in the world.

That's what he wrote. He wrote that to all of us. So my feeling for founders is deep and a huge respect. And at the same time, if they're willing to go a little bit into courage, which is hard because you've just made all the decisions, you don't have much courage for somebody else, I ask them, does it matter to you?

whether all the things you did in your life, each of your children and each of your grandchildren get to do too, as poets, as statesmen, as attorneys, as doctors, as priests, does it matter to you that the same process you found so incredibly fascinating, they get to do too?

Hmm.

I can't always say that they can hear me, but I ask that question because I believe it's really the deep right question.

This mirrors so much ⁓ of my life. My dad was born in Poland, beginning of the Second World War, his family were taken to Soviet labor camp in the Gulag. My grandmother died of

as a result. And my dad was 19 when they get out of the labor camps. So he came to Scotland, long story, so we'll skip that. ⁓ Eventually came to Scotland and

He had to make a living from scratch. couldn't go home at all. And it was just the sheer, as you say, the energy. He created matter out of energy. He created something out of almost nothing. With my mother, who was the daughter of a widowed minor. so, two incredibly tragic young people. They created that. And what was really interesting was dad just flourished. He just flew.

Yes.

And at the end of the life, we came to join the family business almost like out of a duty to follow. And then we started realizing we're all very individually different, talented people in my sibling group. And almost none of us fitted in the following up of dad's dream or necessity in terms of business.

Yes.

And it's only really in the last 10, 20 years as a sibling group, we've started saying what we could have done with these five capitals would be this and this and this and this. And none of it would have been electrical retailing or travel agencies or whatever it is we did. And I think that's really important for listeners to understand that success as a family in business is not

necessarily following and keeping the original business and growing it.

It depends on the individual's innate potential. And that might be completely different from the founders.

Martin, it's just your story is so compelling. My heart is beating very fast this morning. Thank you. I'm gonna say something just picking up on that because suppose you'd started that conversation 50 years ago. ⁓ so no remorse. You didn't express remorse, you. But I have had to deal with many second and third generation people who had remorse, forgetting that.

But the other thing about the business, which again, the second generation and third generation begin to understand, which the first generation often does not understand, is that giving life, which is providing energy and making it matter, in the business world is a generative act, and that new life has its own evolving self.

The families that look like they still hold the businesses never tell you how many evolutions that business went through. They see the business as a living, organic thing. And then they start telling you where it started, doing one thing. Maybe they were building some houses, like my great grandfather was an inventor, and we had little money.

He bought houses because he didn't believe in banks. Then he realized that the mortgage holder was a better deal than biking the mortgage. So he started a bank.

So he asked one of his children, he we were bankers. You you were an inventor of a German guy who had to go fight in the Civil War to get enough money to live. So he came from Germany, didn't fight there. You know, it's an immigrant story. But the business itself was a constantly evolving reality. So what I try to help the second and third generation is to say, look, don't look at the question of who works in the business.

Look at the question first of your learning to love and your vocation. Who are you? And then if one of you is interested in the next transition and evolution of that business, please help us. We love you for that. But let's not see the business as a sacred trust because we kill the business. We put it into preservation and formaldehyde. What the business needs is dynamic regeneration.

you

Right? Because that's how life works. isn't it remarkable the tools that we have to help? The tragedy is when the thinking gets so narrow that they're only one option. And that's just not true. That's preservation, that's formaldehyde. That's the poor frog we have to dissect in high school. It just doesn't work.

Yes.

Hmm.

It's got to, the business has got to be dynamically regenerating just like the family that owns it has to dynamically regenerate just the way mother nature says the rules are. Please, Martin.

This is fascinating. I'm aware of our time and this could go on from my point of view all day. It's amazing. Just bringing you back to, you mentioned it very early in the conversation, Lao Tzu and the whole Daode Qing. I think what we're talking about there in terms of the spiritual aspect is

Yes. Yes.

What they called the Dow, which we would call the universe, is a sort of natural flow from one thing to another. And it's way beyond our understanding. But we've tried to go with the flow. And I think when you take it to a family business context, if like my younger brother was, he wasn't interested in business, but he was an amazing musician, his flow is to music. And can the family help his flow?

Yes, yes, yes.

be fulfilled while the other members of the family may have different flows, but all within the one big flow, if that makes sense.

Yes, and Martin, I think if we were not dissecting Lao Tzu, but if we were trying to understand the way and people ask me that, I don't believe I have a good answer, but I can say to them, if you agree that the deep currents in the oceans are how life on this planet exists, we might have a hint of the magnificence of what Lao Tzu was asking us. So then how do we get into the flow of the

Mm.

deep long currents and get out of the choppiness on the surface. ⁓ now we have to have a joint decision-making system, the social capital, that takes us not to the chop of our feelings about each other, but to the deep currents that support us. that people say, I see what you're saying. And they say, well, that's not easy. I didn't say this was easy.

Ha

Remember, Mother Nature's rule is energy no matter back to energy quickly. Entropy in the second, you can't argue with physics. That's big physics. Can't argue with big physics. and one more thing on big physics. There are three forces. Fission, blow up, too much heat. Inertia, die from cold. Fusion, one plus one makes three. Almost no families die from fission. That makes cells newspapers.

Almost every family I haven't been able to help died from inertia. Bodies resting each other with no connection. The families that do really well practice fusion, practice our sun. One plus one makes three.

Hmm.

in that fascinating big physics. think you say, did I want the audience is saying, how did I wander into this conversation about family business and this crazy maniac is talking about big physics and Mother Nature and entropy. Well, because the rules are the same. We live, we're all living in the same universe with the same rules. Yes, Russ, go ahead, please.

Yeah. What? did?

Absolutely.

What it reminds

me of is a conversation, not something we've spoken about on the podcast, but the conversation I think we touched on earlier this year around the ability for people to live within the plans that are being created. And that kind of idea of in terms of what Martin was describing about wanting or feeling the pull to follow, to kind of be drawn into the family business, that must be multiplied across.

Yes, yes.

millions of family businesses across the world. And there's lots of support and guidance available for families that can focus on this technical way of passing this legal entity from one generation to another generation. I won't get on my soapbox just on this episode, again, conscious of time, but my definition of success is not that ability to do that as a fulfilled life.

And being able to live within the plan that's being created by focusing on those deeper currents seems to me as if that is an ambition for transitions and longevity.

Yes.

We were going to talk a little bit about what I'm thinking about for the future. We won't do it today, but maybe if you'd like to do it again, I'd love to join you a second time and some of it. But let me say one thing as we are coming to the end. The new work I'm doing is changing the word PLAN by removing N and emplacing it with Y. No family ever lived in a plan.

Mmm.

would love to.

huh.

This is a fallacy of lawyers and bankers and management

who don't understand families at all. Plans don't work. You remember the great Mike Tyson, the great boxer who said, you only know how to box the first time you get punched in the face. So all the preparation in the ring is irrelevant. All that's boring. No, the plan's gone. The great general said,

Mhm.

When the first bullet is shot, the battle plan's gone. This is a fallacy that we're living with for reasons that I'm not gonna get into this morning. Human beings live in plays. Here's our poet. What did Shakespeare say? The play is the thing. Of course he did. Of course he did. Human beings live in plays. They don't live in plans.

Yep, and we are all just actors on the stage.

And the marvelous thing about a play is you get to write the next act. So do you want the next act of your play to be fusion or inertia? What do you want? Tell me. I can help you write the play. I can help you scriven your play, but I need you to tell me, you want to be in

and blow up? Tell me. That's a great play. The audience will love it. But I don't think you'll enjoy it too much. Yeah, you just have a choice. You got a choice. Come on. Tell me what you want the next act of the

You

And by the way, are you a welcoming family? Because the next act of the play is all about welcoming. If you got a bunch of 15 to 25s, the next 10 years of your play is a whole bunch of new players. ⁓ I never thought of that. I can't tell you how few people could actually answer that question. I never thought of that. Just go 10 years. Go to the next act of the play. You got a whole bunch of new actors coming in the play. ⁓

Mm-mm.

The play is the thing. And I think the future of our field is getting rid of plans. Now, I'm not being stupid here. I'm not suggesting that there are not situations where once you know how the play is going to be written and the plot, that you don't need a plan. Not suggesting that. But what I'm suggesting is that plans as leading don't work.

huh.

because the human beings won't stay in them. They won't live in that plan. The question is, can we help them write plays that have future acts that are about the aspirations, learning to love, learning to work, managing sex, managing money, the human things that the rising generation, the new players, will be welcomed in and want to stay?

Huh.

We don't have time today to talk about staying, but staying must be because it's a better deal here than there. So how do we create positive, positive welcoming? How do we create positive possibility for someone to say, you know, I, there are problems here, there are human issues here. I'm not being Pollyanna, but this is a good deal over here. These people seem to actually be interested in me.

Mmm.

Hmm.

And they seem to be offering me conversations, as Martin shared about his cousin, that are actually meaningful to me. I guess I'll stay. It's always easier to stay than go, isn't it? As long as you know how to go, I'll leave you with that. If you know how to go, you'll stay. If you don't know how to go, you'll spend a wasted life trying to figure it out.

Uh-huh.

Absolutely, and again, I'm very conscious of our time. As Martin said, I think I could carry on talking to you all day and I love every conversation that we have. I'm very, very grateful for you joining us on the show and I would love to have you back to dive deeper into some of the things we touched on in today's conversation. But all that's left for me to say, Jay, is thank you so much. ⁓ It's been an incredible conversation.

Yes.

I think you can tell by the smiles on our faces in terms of the kind of conversation and how many ideas are sparking. I hope that echoes throughout the audience as well. So thank you and Martin, I don't know if you want to say a couple of words as well.

Just likewise, it's been an absolute pleasure. It's been a long time since I've had the conversation where Shelley and Shakespeare and poems and having an aunt who's a poet and me who's a poet all come within the context of family business. And I think that's the richness and the depth of what family businesses actually need. And I think it shows just the richness and depth of your experience and your wisdom. So it's been an absolute joy. Thank you.

Well, I can only say thank you to you and again to the wonderful people who've taken their time, which is their treasure. Thank you for spending your treasure with the three of us. It's been an incredible privilege. And, Russ and Martin, if you'd like to do it again, I'm more than willing. And I think this has been a very, very rich using of making a pun experience. ⁓ Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.