Running the Family Business Marathon: Crossing the Finish Line of Generational Transitions

Welcome to Legacy Builders, strategies for building successful family enterprises. Brought to you by Beacon Family Office at Assante Financial Management Limited. I’m your host, Cory Gagnon, Senior Wealth Advisor. And on this show, we explore global ideas, concepts, and models that help family enterprises better navigate the complexities of family wealth.

Today, we welcome Russ Haworth, Family Business Advisor at UK based The Family Business Partnership. Russ is a seasoned advisor with nearly two decades of experience empowering families and their enterprises. Leveraging his expertise in financial planning and wealth management, Russ guides clients towards success. Recognized as an industry leader, Russ holds the Advanced Certificate in Family Business Advising from the Family Firm Institute. In addition to his client work, Russ co-directs The Quest for Legitimacy, a global research initiative focused on helping the next generation of family business leaders. He also hosts the acclaimed Family Business Podcast and serves on the advisory board of the Ultra High Net Worth Institute.

My goal is to be the most curious person in today’s conversation with Russ Haworth, where we explore his wealth of experience in guiding families of wealth through complex decisions and multi-generational challenges. We’ll discuss how Russ’ pioneering work in establishing effective governance frameworks has led him to reimagine the role of the family advisor, focusing on fostering collective responsibility and personal accountability. Together, we’ll uncover how Russ helps families cultivate the grit, resilience and interpersonal connections needed to successfully navigate the complexities of wealth preservation and legacy planning across generations. 

Now let’s dive in!

Cory: Welcome, Russ. We’re excited to have you here today to share your wealth of knowledge and experiences with us.

Let’s dive in, shall we? 

Russ: Sounds great.

Cory: Russ, imagine you’re delivering the commencement speech to the graduating class of 2024, and you have the chance to inspire them with your story. How would you begin your speech to convey the incredible lessons and expertise that you’ve gained along your career?

Russ: It’s a great question. It’s a brilliant thought-provoking way to kind of bring out some stories and in preparation, it made me think about ways in which I could tell stories from my life to help articulate this.

The underlying message is that I believe we can achieve far more than we perhaps give ourselves credit for that we believe that we can. There are 3 quick stories I’d like to share with you to help highlight that. 

One is or the first two are personal achievements physically. I have trained and run a marathon and I’ve cycled what’s called Land’s End to John o’ Groats here in the UK, which is the southwest most point to the northeast most point. 

That’s about 1000 miles for cycling and if you’d asked me before I in either of those 2, could you do that? My answer would be no but I got encouraged to do them, shall we say. 

The preparation and training and everything that goes into it creates the creates the possibility of you actually doing it. I remember very distinctly running the last few 100 of yards of the London marathon saying to myself, you’ve done it. I’d never have believed.

I even though I trained well and I got to the start line, I never believed until I could do it that I was going to. You hear lots of stories about hitting the wall and your legs giving up and having to walk.

I actually sped up in the last half of the marathon. I overtook something like 3, 000 people in the last 5k. You get all these stats from your chips as you’re running it and I couldn’t believe that I was able to do that.

I think that’s a real lesson in terms of what I’ve been taking into my business life is that if you’ve got the determination and the resilience you can achieve much more than perhaps you give yourself credit for.

That was taken into a business context when I started my own business because I started that right at the very beginning of COVID. When I handed my notice in to my employer, I had a 3 month notice period and COVID wasn’t a thing.

There was a little bit of news, but it wasn’t upon us in the same way as it became in early spring that year. I launched a face-to-face consultancy business in full lockdown here in the UK. That wasn’t something I had in my business plan. 

As I was talking about the planning and the preparation, I had nothing like this in my planning, my preparation. But what I did have is a belief and a grit and a resilience that was built through that adversity that has prepared me for challenges like that. And I think that’s the key message you’re getting across is learning from that taking those experiences that help create grit and resilience are fantastic ways to prepare you for overcoming any challenge.

Doesn’t make them any easier, but you’ve got that belief and that faith that you can go through those challenges. That’s the message I would give out is, if there’s enough belief in grit and resilience, we can overcome a lot more than we, give ourselves credit for.

Cory: Amazing. And tell me a little bit about that feeling nearing the finish line of the marathon and saying you’ve done it.

You haven’t yet crossed and somehow your brain said, that’s it. You’ve accomplished this, because you could see the finish line or you were nearing the finish line. How did that change your mindset after that, Russ?

Russ: I felt emotional running down that. It’s the London marathon and the way you ended, you turn a corner outside Buckingham Palace, and you run down towards this big archway that has the time above it.

I mean, there’s thousands of runners doing it. Although, I think, 25k to 30k people run, it’s a very individual thing when you’re running up that last bit because you’ve had all the training and the preparation that have gone into to being in that position.

It may have helped that just before that point, maybe a 100, 200-yard sort of on the corner. I saw my other half and her dad waving and shouting and cheering. You kind of get that feeling of I can’t believe I’ve done it even though I’ve trained for it, even though I’ve prepared for it.

I hadn’t prepared for that feeling of running down the last 200 odd yards as you go around that corner. After that, the feeling of a little bit of isolation, a little bit of loneliness because although I’ve achieved it and I’m elated.

There’s no one with you because you’ve crossed the finishing line. There’s other athletes and other runners that have crossed the finish line, but you’re on your own in that situation. It wasn’t until maybe half an hour later when I caught up with my family that I was able to share that experience and share that feeling.

It went from kind of elation to a little bit of isolation and reflection back to elation and celebration with the family. Again, I think that’s a valuable lesson is, all we have is moment. We have the present moment and being present in that moment is such an important element.

Recognizing that in order to feel that elation, sometimes you need to feel that there’s that little bit of loneliness and isolation too. I don’t want to be kind of all doom and gloom about it.

I wanted it to be a positive side, but it was interesting reflection for me to have that feeling of, okay, now what? 

It’s kind of done and this was just seconds after crossing the line and making sure you stop your watch that you get your time and what have you. It’s an interesting reflection.

Cory: And so, Russ, that feeling of isolation, the training that you’ve done presumably was with others who either had done the marathon before or coaches from some perspective, either live or programs.

In that, there can be support for people in their lives where they’re training and they’re with others. You mentioned after the fact that you’re celebrating with your family. But there is that moment where that grit and that individual resilience has to be built to get you across the finish line and that feeling. How does that translate to some of the work that you’ve done and how that relates to families?

Russ:  I think it’s an interesting point in terms of the particularly with a family and a family business. The family are a collective, they’re a group of people and they share some collective responsibility for what’s happening within their family business.

But also, there should be an emphasis on personal responsibility and the fact that there’s lots of training plans for marathons. There’s lots of training plans to be able to cycle 1000 miles but if you don’t take the personal responsibility to do the work, it doesn’t mean anything. 

It’s same as true in you mentioned about training in a group. For the cycle ride, we trained in a group but we all had to do the work. For example, I’d taken the viewpoint of I don’t need to train because everyone else is training.

That will make the execution easy because everyone else has done the training. I wouldn’t have lasted the 1st day on that bike ride and although, there’s an individual challenge in that I had to take personal responsibility for. Part of the beauty of being in a family business is you’ve got others to share that journey with.

In contrast, the marathon was felt very individually. I felt very on my own in that sense but the long bike ride that the lands into Land’s End to John o’ Groats ride, I felt part of something.

Because there was 12 of us that were doing it and we all went through different stages on that journey. There were some people on I had my very low points where I was thinking, how am I going to get through this?

There was 1 day where I woke up and thought I can’t get back on the bike. It was like day 3, I think, or day 2 and I thought I can’t get back on this bike. And yet again, that feeling of all of us in a line cycling towards the finishing line was incredible.

And we all had our own battles and our own experience, but it was something that was collective as well. I think that’s the beauty of a family business is you have your own experience, but it’s shared with those that are closest to you.

But that I think the key message around there is a collective responsibility but there’s very much a personal responsibility there is a is a very valuable message.

Cory: What about that responsibility of you to the others? If there was 12 of you, you had that responsibility to yourself to train but there was some sort of teamwork. How does that come into play with?

Russ: I can share a story. Again, I’m part of a charity group and we do challenge each year generally to raise money for charity. The Land’s End to John o’ Groats was 1 of those. The marathon wasn’t.

That was something except for but a previous challenge prior to Land’s End to John o’ Groats was a more modest cycling challenge. You had to run 10 miles and then cycle to 60 and then canoe, I don’t know, 15 miles down the canal.

I trained for the running bit and I thought, well, cycling’s easy because you’re on the bike and I got about a mile into the cycle ride and cramped up. Luckily, I had a very close friend who was able to sacrifice or willing to sacrifice his event to support me in struggling with mine.

I think that’s a valuable lesson that I’ve taken away is I took for granted that there were elements of what was needed that was more straightforward than they were. As a result, I let people down.

I was fortunate that I had somebody who was able to stay back if you like and pretty much push me up the hills because it was that kind of thing where I just couldn’t move on the bike.

And that’s a valuable lesson in exactly what you were saying is that collective responsibility and collective feeling of we’re in this together. 

Therefore, we should all be putting in the required effort in order for it to be successful. I didn’t do that and it was very apparent of the impact that had. I think, again, that’s true in families is if you don’t take the personal responsibility amongst the collective, and that means that you’re perhaps letting people down, it had a knock-on impact.

It has an impact on this case, a family system. In the case of my bike ride, my friend who had to sacrifice he was an extremely proficient cyclist. He had to sacrifice that in order to support me because I’d taken for granted what was needed in order to do it well.

Cory: How about the relationship after the fact, Russ? He made that sacrifice and we see family members do this in support of the system.

How did you or how could somebody in that situation support the fact that somebody sacrificed personal achievement for the greater good of the collective?

Russ: I’ll talk about the action I took. I sat out there, we did this in legs, we ran our leg then we cycled a leg. We were doing a tour of highest peaks in the county that I live in. I got to the second one and said, I need to stop now because I can’t continue to let you guys down.

I got in the support vehicles. Although I did the canoeing bit, because that didn’t involve the legs that I’ve been using, until that point, I decided to sit up that he could complete the rest in normal fashion as opposed to having to hold himself back from there.

It in some ways, it helps us to cement our friendship, we’re great friends today. I think where it can manifest negatively is that there’s a temptation for him to hold a grudge. Now, we were all doing this for a charity.

At the end of the day, the charity importance connected to his personal achievement on real value or importance connected to his personal achievement on that, it would be very easy for him to hold a grudge on that.

And that could have tainted our relationship for years. We actually did this the Land’s End to John o’ Groats bike ride together. Again, we had times where he was supporting me. We were cycling alongside each other and he’s a far better cyclist than I’ll ever be. 

But had he held a grudge from that previous experience, we wouldn’t have had the same experience on the Land’s End to John o’ Groats ride. It’s a testament to his character.

But again, that’s a charity environment rather than it being something that could lead to the failure or success of a business. That comes with a much higher emotional attachment that could potentially lead to tarnishing that relationship for years to come in here. He’s with every right to say, come on. You owe me one here. 

I literally push you up a hill. You need to help me out on something. I think that’s the danger of when you let people down is that it can lead to there being, the presence of some form of grudge or at least a tainting of that relationship.

Cory: Absolutely. And we’re talking about low stakes environment here, and it takes me back to your comment of preparation. In this circumstance, we’re talking about low risk. It’s for charity but the thing is they’re in family business. There’s a lot at stake from that, are their things that families can be doing where they can lower the stakes, have that ability to build some of that that muscle and be ready for when the stakes are high.

Is there a way that the families listening can bring that lesson and somehow, allow the individuals and collective to grow? 

Russ: Yes, a couple of points on that. Firstly, two kinds of strands to my work. Firstly, I help families implement and create effective governance for them to be able to have the right conversations in the right places with the right people.

It’s perhaps a more simplified view of governance and to me, that helps to create the right forums and the right environments for perhaps some of those trickier questions that can sometimes make their way into the business in other forms.

if there’s a disagreement between, say, 2 siblings and they happen to work in the business or work together that can permeate into the business and affect everybody within that business helping them create the governance and their forums to have that it doesn’t do that, it helps them to prepare.

Within that, there’s a collective responsibility of going, what do we need to create in order to help us move things forward and achieve what we want to achieve? But there’s all the personal responsibility of doing the work themselves in order to get that result.

So again, it’s a bit like having a personal trainer and then asking them to do the press ups. You’re not going to get the results. Not at all.

Doing the work yourself is the way to make it stick and make it impactful within their family business. 

Similarly, a lot of my work is focused around a project that I worked on called the quest for legitimacy, which is essentially a research project that looked at the impact of growing up in a prominent family. 

We would consider family businesses as having a sense of prominence because typically your name is associated with it or what your family do within the community is associated with you, and that can cast a shadow. That’s a very individual experience as well. 

Although we spoke to 25 rising children from across the globe and they had similar experiences, they all felt that similar sense of isolation that I had when I crossed the finishing line.

I finished that I crossed that line along with 30 or 40k people, but I felt as if I was the only 1 that had that experience at that time. That’s something that came across in the research that we did because although this is common, people feel as if they’re the only ones going through it. 

And again, families can have that collective responsibility to help nurture their rising generation, but it’s all partly down to the individual responsibility to be able to do something. 

I’ll just say one thing on that. A lot of family business theory is sort of within the realms of systems theory. The family is a system and whilst that’s true, everybody within that system is an individual.

I think it’s important to think of it as a booth and rather than an either or not that I’m an individual, I need to forget about the system side or we’re in a system, therefore, I need to forget about the individual side. 

It’s the combination of that and looking at it as a booth and rather than an either or is an important way to help families navigate. What can we do collectively that we can celebrate and be fantastic in growing wealth and growing a business together?

If that’s for me within that, brilliant. If it’s not, then what can I do outside of that? What can I do outside of that even if I’m part of the business to have fulfillment and value in my own life? I think is, again, an important conversation to be having.

Cory:  Within the system, oftentimes, there is a champion and somebody who either is pushing forward, and it might not be a somebody.

It might be a collective that is saying, it’s time to get on the bike. We need to go training, and everyone’s saying, no. I want to sleep.

What are you doing? The sun’s not even up yet sort of thing and in that, where is that balance of that individual of I’m ready, let’s do this and the system needs to somewhat keep up to the individual.

There’s got to be some sort of pace there of balance. Is there any kind of take on that, Russ?

Russ: Yes, again, if I can lean back into my example of the charity bike ride, we all had the same goal. We all had the same mission. We wanted to complete a 1,000-mile bike ride.  when somebody was enthusiastic. 

I know it’s raining and the wind’s blowing at 90 miles an hour in straight into your face, but let’s go out and train. We could all muster the enthusiasm and energy needed because we had the same goal.

If somebody turns up to my house on a Sunday morning now and suggest going for a bike ride in the wet and cold because I don’t have that goal, I’m not going to do that. I think, again, in terms of the family context, if there’s AAA common goal, a mission that you are trying to achieve as a family, then that motivation is there.

The ambition is there to go, okay, we want to create something that creates wealth for multiple generations of our family to use a straightforward example.

Therefore, I know from a personal responsibility perspective, I need to do the work. I need to do the training because if I don’t, then we’re less likely to hit that goal than if I was to do that work. I think that’s where the there’s kind of a crossover on that side.

If everybody that started that marathon that year had the same goal. Now, we didn’t all train together, 40k of us, because that would be impractical but we all trained. We all did the work, and we put in the preparation and what was needed that you do the reading to go, well, when this gets tough, how am I going to react?

What do I need to do as I go along this journey in order to try and stave off muscle fatigue and hitting the wall and all the kind of cramps and negative things that can come along. There’s lots you can do earlier in the journey.)

From a family perspective in terms of governance, you can do a lot in terms of preparation and doing the work early on. That means when those difficult times do, inevitably arise, you’re better prepared for them. Doesn’t mean they disappear, but it means you’re better prepared.  You’re better able to face those and navigate those together because you’ve done the work together beforehand. 

So, yes, I think that’s perhaps where there’s some synergy with getting up on a Sunday morning in the howling wind, to ride a bike and, operating a family business skill. 

Cory: Now, one of the things you mentioned about the training is stories, people telling their stories of what it would feel like at certain points. What you’ve done as a collective in this research is brought these stories forward of these families across the globe and a common feeling.

And within that, there’s a gift of these stories that allow people to not feel like they’re the only one feeling that. But there’s other members in the family who maybe have already accomplished that or found their own strategies.

Are their ways within the family that you’ve seen that successful storytelling and passing on some of those lessons? 

Russ: Yes, it’s interesting because we, the work that I do with the quest for legitimacy is spearheaded by a fantastic colleague called Dr. Jamie Weiner. he’s a psychologist based out of Chicago and the idea behind the research was very much his idea to challenge some of the misconceptions that can come out around entitled youth and trust fund brats and the kind of horror stories that you hear around entitlement.

It wasn’t something he was seeing in his work, we embarked on the research try and understand the lived experience of people growing up in that environment and utilizing some of the stories. From there, we spoke to people who felt as though they grew up in the shadow of a giant. Now the giant in their life could be a parent, for example.

But one of the things that, I think it’s key to understand and very much to your point around the sharing of stories is everybody who’s a giant in someone’s life is just going through life for the first time themselves anyway. They have gone through trials and tribulations and errors and   difficult times.

They’ve navigated that and created the grit and perseverance needed for that to be or to result in success that then creates that shadow. What we tend to find is a lot of the work that’s done around families is then to protect the wealth and to stop the mistakes that can risk the depletion of that wealth, which is important work.

We’re not diminishing the importance of that work but it does restrict the ability for people to learn from mistakes. If there’s too much of a kind of a structure around everything that you can never make a mistake and you’re protected from the realities of the world, it can lead to that lack of grit and resilience.

One of the things we’re suggesting with families is for the founders or the people who have cast a shadow to share their stories about how they did that. What are the mistakes that they made? What did they learn from? What are some of the difficult times that they’ve had to navigate? And how did they do that? 

Because, I mean, we’ve all been through a global pandemic in the recent past and yet I can’t imagine everybody sat down talking to the giants in their lives about how did how did you navigate? How did you get through it?

It can be an important part of the development for those individuals to understand that the Giant is a human after all. You see the wizard of Oz where they call back the curtain and it it’s similar to that. 

There’s a humanness in there that provides a reassurance that it’s okay to go through challenges and not know the answer to everything. Sometimes we can build people up onto a pedestal and go, I’m never going to be able to live up to their achievements because they’ve got all the answers.

They’ve never made mistakes. They’ve never had to deal with the same sort of adversity that I am and storytelling is a great way to remove that myth and create connection between generations as well.

Cory: Absolutely. Absolutely. Russ, as we near the end of our conversation, there’s a few questions that I ask each guest before we wrap up. Are you ready for the tough ones?

Russ:  I am indeed.

Cory: The first is, what is 1 key strategy you believe is most essential for building successful family enterprises?

Russ: I may be biased in this, answer, but for me, building effective and appropriate governance sets the foundation for navigating the challenges that inevitably any business is is going to face.

Having that tailored to the complexities that come from being in business with your family means that you’re better able to navigate that together and continue on your journey towards what it is you’re looking to achieve.

My answer there would be to build effective and appropriate governance, and the appropriate words, the important 1 there, rather than just having some government for the sake of it.

It needs to serve a purpose.  And what would that what would that look like in place on, maybe, on the simplest terms?

Because, we could go to very complicated. Examples, a very simple example. Again, speaking back to talk we’re saying about the ambition for us to cycle that, land to John Groats.

Having a shared vision as a family, there can be a lot of assumption in place that everybody’s in the family business for the same reasons.

But unless you have a clearly articulated vision and statement that says this is what we’re doing, you can’t know that for sure. And it can be    empowering to harness the energy within the family in a vision statement to say this is where we’re going and why we’re going there.

That, again, it gives you that lens to look through when it comes to doing the hard yards of the Sunday morning training 

That that’s a prime example of where some governance can come in to play.

One other quick one is where roles can become blurred between, say, owners and managers and family that the famous kind of 3 circle, model, Creating relevant boundaries between those roles  that the right people are having the right conversations at the right time is another way to kind of smooth some of the complexity.

It doesn’t make it perfect, but it helps to have some of those boundaries in place around those different roles.

Cory: Fantastic. And what is the most common challenge that you see family enterprises encountering when it comes to wealth transition and generational continuity? 

Russ:  for me that perhaps 1 of the clearest areas is a lack of clarity around expectation.

Again, the presence of assumption in those discussions, and I think that’s across families and al advisers. I’ve been in situations where assumptions that I’ve made have been completely wrong.

And because there’s a lack of clarity and being clear on this is what I want and here’s my expectations and here’s what I want to do, it can lead to unintended consequences further down the line.

And I think that’s a collective responsibility again between the individuals involved, but al the advisory community around that is making sure people are very clear on what it is that they’re trying to achieve and not have it be led by someone else’s definition of success.  For example, we seem to measure family success in their ability to pass trading entities down through generations and where that’s a collective ambition, brilliant. Let’s do all we can to to make that happen. 

But if it’s not and we make that assumption, it can lead to challenges and people feeling trapped.
I think being clear about what it is that everybody wants and creating the environments that allow those conversations to happen is a valuable exercise for families to undertake because doing that now can save a lot of, confusion and, potential issues further down the line.

Cory: I love it. And in your experience, what are the top 3 qualities that successful family enterprise leaders possess?

Russ:  For me, the first one s curiosity. Giving up the need to be right and having a curiosity to understand a challenge, I think, is a fantastic skill in a leader because it means you can, harness opinion from elsewhere.

And although you might be the leader and have kind of responsibility and decision-making responsibilities from there, if you approach all of the challenges you face with the mindset of curiosity and openness, I think it sets you up for being in a better position to make those decisions.

The second I would say is honesty. And sometimes, I see family, particularly with other family members, there can be a challenge in terms of being honest in terms of a a sense of candor with people to go, actually, what you’re doing is not what we’re expecting of you.

Your performance is not what it should be. That can be a  difficult conversation.  Within a family.  I think that honesty is an important element. I’d suggest it’s kind honesty rather than it being kind of brutally honest. Like, you’re useless. Get out.

That that may be honest, but it’s not delivered well. I think the kindness in there as well, but al a sense of courage. The third element I would say is courage. and that’s courage in many different forms.

Courage to make a decision, but al a courage to be vulnerable and to say to people, I don’t know what the answer is here. How can we get to this solution together?

And creating that mindset amongst, the team or whatever teams they’re leading, I think is  important. I’d summarize as curiosity, honesty, and courage, all mixed in with kindness. 

That’s the 4th I’ve just chucked in, but why not?

Cory: I think it’s good to clarify because if you if you don’t put perspective into it, it can be taken in a different way. And Russ, before we conclude our discussion, I’d like to highlight where our listeners can engage in more of the conversations that you’re having as well as the conversations that you’re listening to.

Russ:  I think in terms of pointing people to say a resource where I hang out a little bit, I’m the host of my own podcast.

I haven’t recorded many episodes recently, but there’s a back catalog of about 170 episodes available. That’s imaginatively titled as the family business podcast.  it’s, as I say, various different topics for anyone that’s in business with their family. I speak to experts from all over the globe, around those kinds of things. That, I think, is a valuable resource. I mentioned about the quest for legitimacy.

You can find out a lot more about that at quest for legitimacy dotcom. There is al a book of the same title that was authored by my colleague and we used the story, I say we, he wrote the book, He uses the stories, that we heard from the research to brilliantly highlight the different, common challenges that can come in that environment. 

It’s a fantastic week. Although there was some academic research to back it up, it’s not an academic book. It’s a storytelling book that highlights those points.  I’d recommend going there and if people want to connect with me on LinkedIn, then, you can do so. I think it’s on Russell Hayworth on there, Roland and Russ Hayworth, but, I’m sure we can find a link somewhere.

Cory: And we’ll put that in the show notes as well for sure.

Russ: Awesome.

Cory: Great and I wanted to make sure that we covered everything today. Our conversation went by very quickly. Is there anything that you’d like share with our audience that we didn’t get a chance to touch on?

Russ: I don’t think so. I think going through the questions that that you’ve put to me today has made me realize that the parallels that exist within marathon and long-distance bike riding and successful family enterprise.

That may be something I use, a little bit more in in my own work with clients.  I appreciate the questions that you’ve asked to help me realize that as well. Thank you.

Cory: Great. Well, I  think that there is a connection between the body and the mind and when people do figure that out, their performance can be exponential.

I appreciate that that conversation and thank you, Russ. I appreciate you taking the time to share, your stories, your expertise, the experiences, with us today.

I found the conversation insightful, and, I know that our listeners will find it valuable. Thank you.

Russ: Thank you very much. It’s been great fun.

As we wrap up this episode, we invite you to reflect on the invaluable perspectives Russ has shared on the power of grit, resilience, and shared responsibility within family enterprises.

Whether you are part of a family enterprise or provide consulting to family enterprises, Russ’ insights underline the importance of fostering a culture of shared responsibility and resilience.

Throughout our discussion, Russ highlighted the critical role of individual responsibility and collective support within family enterprises. Drawing parallels from his own experiences in endurance challenges, Russ emphasized how personal grit and resilience, when combined with the shared journey of a family, can lead to remarkable triumphs. Russ stressed the importance of storytelling in family businesses. 

By openly sharing their personal journeys, struggles, and lessons learned, family members can inspire the next generation, fostering a culture of growth, adaptability, and mutual support. Ultimately, our conversation underscored the delicate balance between individual responsibility and collective accountability within family enterprises empowering each member to thrive, while preserving the family’s enduring legacy.

For families seeking to cultivate a thriving, sustainable enterprise, Russ at The Family Business Partnership is always ready to help. You can reach out to him via his website and we’ve included his contact information together with additional resources in the show notes to support you on your journey.

Disclaimer: 

This program was prepared by Cory Gagnon who is a Senior Wealth Advisor with Beacon Family Office at Assante Financial Management Ltd. This not an official program how Assante Financial Management and the statements and opinions expressed during this podcast are not necessarily those how Assante Financial Management. This show is intended for general information only and may not apply to all listeners or investors; please obtain professional financial advice or contact us at [email protected] or visit BeaconFamilyOffice.com to discuss your particular circumstances before acting on the information presented.