Generational Alignment for Effective Wealth Transition

Intro:  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 and on this show, we explore global ideas, concepts and models that help family enterprises better navigate the complexities of family wealth. 

Let’s dive right in and start learning how to take control of your wealth to realize the lasting legacy you’re intentionally working towards. 

Together, we’re building legacies. 

[Cory:] Today, I’m extremely excited to introduce our esteemed guest, who’s here to shed light on the exciting intersection of financial literacy and family enterprise. My personal goal today is to be the most curious person in our conversation with Cindy Radu.

Now, Cindy isn’t your typical wealth transition advisor; she’s a distinguished professional with over 35 years of experience helping families navigate the complexities of wealth. Her expertise spans legal, fiduciary, trust, and governance matters, acquired through her work in professional services firms, financial institutions, and family offices. Cindy’s dedicated her career to assisting individuals, family enterprises, business owners, and family offices in navigating the intricate web of opportunities and challenges that come with wealth.

Cindy boasts an impressive list of credentials, including B.Comm, FCPA, LL.B., LL.M, TEP, ICD.D, and Family Enterprise Advisor. However, what truly sets her apart is her down-to-earth approach and her passion for making the world of finance accessible to all.

But Cindy isn’t just about numbers and legal jargon. She’s an active member of some fantastic organizations like TEC Canada, the Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners (STEP), the Purposeful Planning Institute, and the Family Firm Institute, all of which reflect her commitment to learning and sharing knowledge.

What truly distinguishes Cindy is her dedication to giving back. She’s a global speaker, and author, and has served on committees and boards for various professional groups. Her remarkable achievements include winning the prestigious “Trusted Advisor of the Year” award at the global STEP Private Clients Awards. Even more recently, it was announced that Cindy is a finalist in the 2023 STEP Worldwide Family Business Advisory Practice of the Year category. Without further ado, let me give a warm welcome to Cindy! 

[Cindy:] Hi, Cory. Thank you so much for that intro. It’s nice to be here.

[Cory:] Thank you, Let’s dive right in. Shall we?

[Cindy:] I’m ready.

[Cory:] Alright, Cindy, imagine you’re delivering a commencement speech to a graduating class, and you have the chance to inspire them with your story. How would you begin your speech to convey the incredible lessons and expertise you’ve gained along your career?

[Cindy:] So one of the organizations that you mentioned in the intro was Purposeful Planning Institute. And I was just at my first, actually, in-person, PPI conference in Denver. And the first session that we had was a workshop with a woman by the name of Esther Choi, of the leadership story lab.

And they put us up tables with people. You had to sit at a table with people that you didn’t know And we had a few of these really interesting speed rounds of questions, like, 2 minutes that you had the right to ask these questions.

The sort of outcome of this after a few rounds was to have somebody I had never met to actually write sort of this intro. And so I thought it would be fun to kinda share that because it was just really, really interesting. So a lot of these people are Americans. So this is this is what he wrote.

If one gets the opportunity to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, shouldn’t one do it?

What if they’re about to get their AARP membership card? So that’s like the retired person’s thing in the US. What if they don’t know exactly where Mount Kilimanjaro is? When someone is in tune with themselves, their desires, their wishes, and their abilities, they can do it.

And so I love this story because I told them the story about how I climbed Mount Kilimanjaro very spontaneously and smiled the morning of my 50th birthday. So, of course, that’s not the sort of thing that just kind of do swan spontaneously.

But, this idea of being spontaneous, but noticing when opportunities come up and knowing that there’s tons of support out there along the way.

And for my career, when you talked about, my introduction, all these letters, and everything behind my name, I’ve just had so much good fortune and a lot of really hard times as well, but my first designation was commerce.

And I remember being told in one of my accounting classes when I said to the professor after class one day, I don’t understand how these John Labat financial statements are pulled together.

This is like about week 2 and he’s like, well, you probably won’t pass this course, which I was like, oh, really?

So that’s it for me. That was a challenge. And I ended up doing my CA. And largely, it was because I was told that I couldn’t, and I was going to make sure that I could prove somebody very wrong on that. And I ended up pretty much right after I got my CA as the controller, law firm here in Calgary, which was, like, crazy because I was maybe 23 years old, and I had a staff of about seventeen people.

And I think one of them was maybe younger than me, and I loved I love the environment of the law firm, the people that I was working with, and as I was getting to my later twenties, I was like, Okay. Well, what am I gonna do? I’m not gonna, for the rest of my career, I’m not gonna have a bigger, better, kind of, law firm that I’m gonna work with.

There are lots of great law firms, but I decided to go to law school. So I did my my L. B here at UFC and doing my masters out at UBC.

I clerk at the BC Court of Appeal. I co-authored the university textbook, Relaxation, and the State Planning in Canada with one of my professors from from EOC. And that sort of put me on a whole other trajectory of what I call my BC or before child career where I now was making a name for myself, really, in this tax and trusts world as a specialist in that space.

And it was after I had my daughter that I took a really different track and really started back to a very different career path coming in on the financial institution side. Then I was asked to start a trust company, which, again, isn’t the sort of thing that you just know how to do. It’s just an opportunity, to figure it out, okay, “onto the next thing” and that eventually evolved into the multifamily office space. A few years ago, I decided to go out on my own so that I could work with high and ultra-high-net-worth families taking all of this very interesting background and experience I’ve had to help them with their wealth transition goals with their families.

[Cory:] That’s that’s a great story and a lot of things to actually,  inspire that next generation through that, as you said Cindy, spontaneous is really the big thing that I got out of it.

Can we go back to that day or that moment when the professor told you that you probably wouldn’t pass that class, because that really, to me, is a pivotal point for you. And some people would take that, as you said, as an opportunity, And for some people, it would crush them.

And, tell me a little bit more about that decision, Maybe you recall the decision exactly,  and how the rising generation or the next generation can harness some of that amazing energy and decision-making that you had that day or in those days?

[Cindy:] Yeah. Well, I mean, I remember it very clearly because it was one of those big auditory bowls. And after the lecture, it went down, to the pit where the professors stand. And I’ve had my great big thick 2-inch spine accounting book, and I’ve opened it to the page of these financial statements. He’s like, and I’m just totally confused. And I was I’ve just never I don’t think at that point had anybody tell me that I couldn’t do something that I wasn’t gonna succeed. And I thought, well, at least I could try.

I remember feeling, and and frankly, I was a little bit mad that I was gonna show him but that, yes, I could. I think honestly, it was the only pure chance that I got in the counting of all my accounting courses that I had to take. It was absolutely pivotal.

So I just think we have to cut ourselves some slack. I get education for me is we’ll talk about this probably more in in the time that we have together, but education and this idea of lifelong learning is core to my being.

I love learning and so to have somebody kind of shoot down a desire to learn or want to know more, I just think is a real shame, especially in that kind of academic environment.

Like, that just goes without saying, but there’s, more awareness of different learning styles and, everybody can learn. We have different levels of capability and of interest, but it’s really finding,  what are those things that are interest you’re interesting to you.

What do you, what should? There are some things that people should have some very basic knowledge of at least but nurturing that and finding that kind of what’s in it for me. Why does this motivate me to want to learn this? And for me, it was a little bit of yeah.

[Cory:] Like, I’m gonna show you that I can I can do this in that moment. So a few great points there that I’d love to dive deeper into. Maybe if we go to the most recent point there that you made, Cindy, of what’s in it for me. I think of some of these family enterprises where there might be, something that’s written in a family governance document or something that the family’s decided, here’s what we’re going to do to increase our knowledge and capabilities as a family.

But really going back to “what’s in it for me?” How how can families, bring that into their learning objectives and make sure that those members are equally as aligned.

[Cindy:] Yeah. So I think, it is some reflection that people need to do individually as adult learners. Like, why is this important to me in whatever that context is? I mean, education is empowering financial literacy is empowering. it’s for you, not only for your own individual success in life not that the financial piece is the ultimate litmus test but we do wanna be good stewards of of our wealth. And I don’t think a lot of people are encouraged or taught to do that.

I have a Really interesting RBC report from 2017. So on education, this is a 2017 report by RBC, and I can send you the link afterward if your audience or listeners are interested in it.

But some of the stats are that 51% of Canadian parents, only 51% have begun any kind of education process with their rising gen with their adult children. 41% intend to start but haven’t. And 10% are just kind of like you’re on your own. It’s really interesting that, like, that’s over 50% 50% of people in families are just like, okay. We have all this wealth out here, but we’re not really doing anything to help you like, learn how to use that wealth effectively to meet your goals, to, pass on to the next generation beyond ours and yours. So there are a lot of learning opportunities that are there and for whatever reason this isn’t something that people are focusing on.

[Cory:] Wow. And so 51% have started. And going back to your comment of what should? 

And it might be the difference that that line between the 51%, and the 40% that that intend to is where do they start? How do they even know what is that education or what are those skills they want that next-gen to have?

[Cindy:] Yeah. And I think a lot of that is you don’t even know what you don’t know. Right? and even so, we’ll just call generation 1. The parents are generation 1 and we’ll talk about the kid, the children, and those generated children as generation 2.

I think and I don’t wanna spend time looking through the report right now, but I have in my mind that the number of people who had started education, really, for them, what that was telling 2 generations on how much wealth was there. That was the very basic litmus test is. Okay. Well,  this is how much wealth is there, but not even not really taking to the next step. What do we need to know? 

Well, there are lots of things that people should know. Working with advisors actually is the really important thing to understand. Like, who are the different advisors?

What are their roles? How do you evaluate visors? How do you find a good connection? A lot of people just kind of default to their parents’ advisors, or they’ll whipsaw and go the other way.

And they’ll say, well, no, I’m not gonna have anything to do with my parents’ advisors because they’ve maybe had a bad experience through that.

I feel like Advisors have a tremendous overlooked opportunity to start having these types of conversations with rising gem family members. They, in my experience, typically do want to learn. They’re just not, they’re not really sure where to start and they’re busy, so it’s easy to put it off to another day.

So we wanna make it easy inviting, engaging, and getting back to this, what’s in it for me? Some families will use a bit of a carrot or stick approach. It’s like, well, you need to do this education, or you won’t be able to participate in X Y Z or it might be more the carrot where it’s like, if you do this, then you’re going to be part of this.

We’re all gonna go on a big family trip together, whatever it is, but really that incentive to truly learn needs to come from some sort of internal motivation. I certainly there are technical topics that people should at least have a fundamental understanding of budgeting is a really, really important one. Again, basic financial literacy, how to read a balance sheet, how to read an income statement, and understanding, , investment terminology at its basic level.

Those things are all important to learn, and certainly, that’s in your world. I am sure you’ll agree that’s important information to have. But there’s also things like trusts, which for me, is one of my superpowers that I call it. I love trusts. I think they’re tremendously overlooked opportunities. Most families have a of families of wealth have a trust in their structure somewhere.

It might be buried in a will which we call a testamentary trust. Or it might be what we typically refer to as a family trust, but not understanding how these structures work and who is a trustee.

What is their role? In Canada very typically, historically, we haven’t even old beneficiaries that they are beneficiaries of a trust. And, of course, that’s changing with some of the new changes in disclosure rules that are now in effect, but it’s a huge opportunity for education.

[Cory:]  It’s just a perfectly set up structure for creating a really tremendous education process. And I  like how you mentioned the responsibility, and it really comes to that alignment of it’s not just gen 1 in your example or gen 2, or the advisors, but all 3 working together to ensure that they are increasing that literacy.

And so, Cindy, you mentioned many different, components there. The basics of budgeting, financial statements, even just the terminologies that are used, And some of that might just come from not having that exposure to those conversations, even or could even be in the case where that 1st generation maybe doesn’t necessarily understand as much. What’s happening, any anything where you can shed light on maybe even a shared journey together that you’ve seen or any stories where it’s really worked well to get that that literacy up?

[Cindy:]  Yes, so there’s there’s a couple. So  I’ll start with mom like mom and dad. And so the parents, I think, often I mean, they’re Experts and whatever it is that they’ve done, they’ve created wealth. Right? So they’re they’re smart people But now we’re getting into a field that is very different from typically what their comfort level was in terms of how they created the wealth, whatever their business is, for example.

And so one example that relatively recently where I was contacted by the business owner in this scenario, the father. They were doing an estate freeze, which we don’t need to get into the details of, but basically, a transaction to freeze the value of a business and share the future growth with, other family members and it’s a relatively simple conceptually, but it’s a complex series of transactions.

The accountant was, although the accountant and the lawyer were saying, the same things in terms of the technical piece, there was a lot of stuff that was going on the client was really confused about and called to say, no, I just need some neutral help because I’m not sure.

And if I ask my lawyer, they say this, no, I’ve asked my accountant, they say, The other thing, so it’s confusing and it’s again okay, we have our own jargon as advisors, and in my experience, technical advisors often aren’t the best people to explain things to people. We’re really good at explaining things to other technical advisors because that’s our training.

But to bring it to a relatable level that’s practical without too much detail and be then responsive to the questions that arise from what you shared, that’s a very different type of skill set to have.

So in this particular case, it was, in fact, this idea of a trust and the client, both parents who are frustrated because they’re, like, we’re being asked to decide who our trustees should be, who the lawyer should be who the beneficiaries should be. We don’t even know what those terms mean.

What qualities we should be looking for in those people? Do they have to be here in the city?

So a lot of really good practical questions but as advisors, we just are like, okay.

We need to know what your settler trustees and beneficiaries are, and we might rattle off really quickly what those things are.  But that’s not helpful for making good decisions. And really for me, education, think about how many decisions you make from the moment your alarm goes off in the morning.

Right? We are constantly making decisions. And so one of my big passions is to help families make good decisions and to me, that’s kind of the essence of good governance. Governance is a big word. What does that mean?

One of my favorite governance people in Canada is followed by the name of Matt Fulbrook. And I always of get this a little bit twisted, but he defines he started defining good governance as intentionally cultivating cost-effective conditions to make good decisions.

So intentionally cultivating effective conditions to make good decisions. So for me, education is one of those conditions. You need to understand what it is you’re making a decision about.

Otherwise, how are you even possibly going to make it? a good decision. And when you start multiplying those decisions over a range of family members, You never mind. It was just the parents together who were making those decisions. If they’re not in alignment, right, of understanding what they’re going through, it’s gonna start getting conflict, right, disagreement.

It might not be a big conflict, but it’s frustrating, and it’s unnecessary and it diverts you from the goal of making good decisions.

[Cory:] Right. And those advisors using jargon, that these people understood that they needed some of that education or an outside perspective. Now what about talking a little bit more about the frustration and some of those disagreements? Sometimes what I hear is the parents and their advisors and going back to how that next generation understands how to evaluate advisors where they might feel as though the parents’ advisors and the parents did something to them versus for them.

And you gave the example of an estate freeze where it’s very much a for them, but in some of those structures, it could feel like controls being taken away. Right. So this evolution of the way that we work with families is so exciting And, again, not everybody’s cut out to work in the space from an adviser perspective where, Like okay. So let me just say. 

[Cindy:] So family meetings are really important. Like having some kind of a consistent for families to talk about stuff. Often times it’s important that we get the adviser, multiple advisors perhaps, to explain things in those family meetings. But the parents, again, aren’t often the best people to help figure out who the best person is to be in the room. Because they don’t know what they don’t know.

So there’s this role now that’s evolving called the integrated advisor. Again, I can provide you a link to a really great article by an amazing thought leader in Canada, Tom McCollough. But, I think just taking it to the most basic level. The way I like to explain it is you would never go to an architect and say, build me a house.

Let me know when it’s done. Right? You’re never gonna do that. But in essence, that’s what we do with advisors or, like build me an investment policy statement, do the trust draft my will. Whatever you recommend that’s what I need. But if you’re building a house, if you have the opportunity to build a house from scratch, you’re probably gonna want it to sit your lifestyle.

And how many kids do you have? And do you have live-in care?  Or do you wanna have it adapted for, there are mobility issues, etc.. Like, there’s gonna be a lot of tailoring to this particular home that we’re gonna build. So you work with the architect, but you also need that general contractor, right, to oversee this and make sure the right people are coming in at the right time doing the right thing.

And so this role of the integrated advisor is kind of that for families where it’s people who have a really broad range of experience who know kind of all the players that are there who are highly collaborative in their approach.

We need that collaboration really do the best work that we can with with families. So this idea of how do we find those 1 or 2 people who can be that kind of family whisperer and help them map out a learning strategy, help them find those advisors that are gonna be not only a clinically a really good fit but personality-wise, a good fit and have this really good collaborative muscle in their toolkit.

There’s another thing or tool that has probably been out for a couple of years. It’s called the 10 domains of wealth. What it does is it sets out all the domains that families of wealth will touch on, , during their lifetime. And it applies across all wealth levels for sure. Typically when we think about transitioning wealth, we are thinking about, like, state planning, state planning legal, investment advisory, financial planning, and insurance.

Right? We tend to focus on a lot of these really technical things, but for families to really flourish over generations to be the best individually and collectively as they can be, we need to focus on other things as well. So for me, governance, we’ve talked about that, but governance is a really, really important piece. Leadership preparation, education, how we get people ready to move into these leadership roles, health care issues, philanthropy, family dynamics issues, so the range of needs that families have is so much broader than just making sure my will is done or making sure that my investments are in place.

So this integrated advisor general contractor kind of role, we’re gonna see, I think, more and more people evolving into this is something that I wanna do as an advisor and If that’s the case, then we need to step up our game as well.

Have a much broader lens and get the training and expertise mentoring them that we need to do a really great job for the families we work with. It’s a fun time. It’s a really fun time for advisors, and it is, I think, going to be really rewarding for advisors and especially rewarding for families as they move through a very different type of process than they’ve been through in the past with advisors.

[Cory:] And it really Cindy sounds like learning a little bit from some of those other industries asking the questions, as you said, in, relating it to to building a house is, somebody needs to be there to ask the questions.

Somebody needs really be okay with the fact that we don’t know what we don’t know, as you said, and bring some of that forward and lay out that plan with the family. And you mentioned family meetings and how important they are. Being on that journey together, I think,  is what I heard from you.

[Cindy:] I mean, even if you think about a family meeting, you’re okay with a family meeting, but how do we do that?  Like, what does that mean? Do we have an agenda? What would that agenda look like? Who attends the family meeting? How do we define family for purposes of family meetings is one of the first questions that I typically ask the nuclear family. Is that gonna include spouses? Is that gonna include long-term partners who decide what long-term is?

What about children, younger children? When do we start to include them in family meetings and how do we get them excited about being part of this? How do we create opportunities for mentorship for them? One family that I work with, at the family, manual. They have an annual family assembly, and the teenagers are encouraged to do presentations. It could be as simple as a project that they did at school or a trip that they went on, that they learned something from or they want to share whatever it is.

There are ways to get the skills of learning to present to feel comfortable getting up in front of people. I mean, that’s huge. That’s a really important skill set to have. And so family meetings have a lot of potential in terms of skill development. But it’s also that bonding, learning how to communicate, realizing that conflict is normal and okay, but how do we resolve conflict in our family?

How are we making decisions together? those things don’t just happen. It’s muscles that you have to exercise and, ideally develop some protocols around that you can always go back to, okay. These are our values. This is what we’re all about as a family. This is the purpose that we, , purposes that we’ve articulated for our financial wealth. What are we doing with that and how are we moving forward? It doesn’t just happen. You have to put some intentionality behind it.

[Cory:] I love that. Yep. Absolutely.

Cindy, our conversation’s been going amazing and time has just been flying by, there are a few questions that I wanna make sure that I ask, and as we wrap things up today in our episode, some things that I would like to ask each guest. Are you ready for the tough ones?

Alright, and you may have already mentioned it, but I wanna make sure that we have the opportunity to go a bit further.

What is one key strategy you believe is most essential for building a Successful Family Enterprise?

[Cindy:] Yeah. For me, it’s education. So it’s governance which again, to me, is wrapped up in this whole idea of cultivating those effective conditions to make good decisions. That’s governance. So we make decisions all day every day and education is a really key part of that. So education hiding as an effective condition for governance.

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

[Cindy:] I’m gonna say leaving things too late is a big challenge.  This RBC report that I mentioned before, 47% of people have a will in place. Only 40 to 47% of people have a will in place. And then most people think that if you’ve got your will, that’s it. That’s when your state plan is done. But again, this is not, It’s nowhere near sufficient. Rarely do people actually share the contents of their wills with the rising generation or people who are going benefit from the will.

And there’s if they’re not sharing, there’s no preparing either. So that’s for me you just need to get started.  And it can feel really intimidating to get started. But there are people out there who are doing this kind of work or aren’t doing this kind of work.

Like when I say that, meaning sort of this governance is a bigger picture piece, but there are allied advisors in those 10 domains areas. We need to put all these pieces of the puzzle together. So there are resources out there and people should be asking for them.

[Cory:] Absolutely. And in your experience, what are the top 3 key qualities that successful family enterprise leaders possess?

[Cindy:] Okay. So you won’t be surprised by this one. I’m gonna say they’re lifelong learners. So  I’ve said, I think enough about about education and decision making, but they’re also really great listeners. So listening to, not listening to wait for your turn to respond, like, when is the other person taking a breath but really listening to what the person is saying, listening for the emotion behind the words trying really to understand and appreciate that people come with different perspectives, and that’s okay.

Right? So that whole communication piece is really important. And then I’ve talked a bit about this idea of collaboration and there’s again, through that purposeful planning institute, there was a podcast I was on, I think, one day, and I wasn’t speaking. I was just listening to it. And somebody said collaboration, something like collaboration is like a muscle. The more you use it, the stronger it gets. So I really like that the idea of co and collaboration is very different from a handoff. We all work with advisors in our world. Whether we’re in this space shop, we work with other people.

And I think if you actually stop to reflect, you’d be pretty clear on the difference between a handoff. Like, it’s like, okay, I’m done with this now. This is over to you versus a really collaborative type of approach to where this needs to go next continuing to touch base, it’s a very different type of approach.

And along with that, I think, goes like a willingness to compromise. to say, I’m not the smartest person in the room. , I’m gonna make mistakes. Everybody makes mistakes. That’s okay. What have we learned from that? How do we move on? So I think those would be my 3 lifelong learning, great listening collaborative mindset.

[Cory:]  Awesome. And before we conclude our discussions today, I’d like to highlight some of the work, where our listeners can engage in more comp conversations with you or the conversations you’re having, Cindy. You’re the Chief Learning Officer for Tamarind Learning Canada. Could you give a quick overview of the resources that are available to to families here?

[Cindy:] So Tamarind Learning, if you’re in Canada, go to tamarindlearning.ca. You’ll see a resources tab, and there are all kinds of podcasts and webinars in there as well. But there are also tools. So one of the things that we talked about was this What’s in it for me. And so there’s work in there for people to go in and do a little assessment and see, where am I on a scale of 1 to 5 on these key learnings that I should have in my toolkit as a wealth holder and then Tamarind Learning itself is an online learning platform.

So anybody who’s interested in having a look at that or learning more about that is certainly welcome to reach out to me. I can help them get a bit more into it, do a demonstration, and see what it’s all about.

But really it’s that, again, being strategic and intentional about the learning recognizing that people have different learning styles everything is audio as well as visual with gamification.

Like, it’s made interesting. , and people can learn asynchronously. So if family members as they often are now or spread throughout the country or the world there’s still an opportunity for them to learn together but on their own time.

[Cory:] Great. Yes. Lots that have of great content in those modules that you’ve created. In there. Again, I may seem a little daunting, but I think that the workbook that you mentioned is a great place and a great resource to get started.

Cindy, you’ve also written a chapter in a collaborative book with tools for multi-generational wealth building in the family business. Your chapter was titled Intellectual Capital The Key to Good Governance in Family Enterprises.

Can you provide a quick overview of the chapter and when our listeners can get their hands on that?

[Cindy:] Sure yeah! So, I mean, we’ve talked probably about quite a bit of my sentiments, my feelings about education and governance in the podcast today. The book is really helping people focus on this idea that financial capital is one piece of capital, but there are all these other types of qualitative capital.

And for me, intellectual capital is really foundational. And so the chapter is on that. Some of the stuff that we’ve talked about today. Why is education important? How do we move forward with education? What are some of the hurdles? And, really just creating those great opportunities for families to begin and continue along with their governance journey very intentionally.  

[Cory:] Great. The book is called Rising The Boab and I think it’s out later this year, Cindy, maybe closer to November or December.

[Cindy:] Yeah. So a teaching attendee is a woman who’s brainstormed this and who’s in highly collaborative effort. I was delighted to have been asked, to provide a chapter. So her timing with the publisher is for later in November, and certainly, it will be available on Amazon, but to watch, to watch for that will help people dig more into other types of qualitative capital because different advisers will have come at that with a different lens.

[Cory:] Right. I wanted to make sure that we’ve covered everything. Is there anything else that you’d like to share with the audience that we didn’t get a chance to touch on?

[Cindy:] So there’s so many things in this space. I think just really to encourage people to get proactive. It’s September. It’s fall. Everybody’s back at school. We’re kind of past the summer low. Listening to podcasts that you’re doing and having conversations with your advisors to say, like, am I doing everything that I can? 

I should be getting my gen twos prepared for inheriting this wealth and starting to take steps to do that.  Those are my parting thoughts.  

[Cory:]  Great. Well, thank you, Cindy, for taking the time to share your expertise and experience with us today. Your insights have been incredibly valuable, and we’re grateful for your contribution to this episode  

[Cindy:] Thank you. It was a pleasure being with you today. 

Today, we had the privilege of diving deep into the world of family wealth with Cindy Radu. I hope you found this conversation as enlightening and valuable as I did.

Throughout our discussion, Cindy shared incredible insights and strategies for building successful family enterprises and leaving a lasting legacy. We explored. It’s these valuable insights that can truly make a difference in your own journey of legacy building.

I want to express my deepest gratitude to Cindy for generously sharing her time, expertise, and knowledge with us. Her expertise brings a unique perspective to our exploration of family enterprises. Their insights have provided us with actionable strategies to take control of our wealth and build a lasting legacy.

If you’d like to learn more about Cindy and her services, you can find them at CindyRadu.com. I highly encourage you to connect with Cindy to explore how her expertise can support your family enterprise on its path to success.

Outro: Thank you for joining me, Cory Gagnon, your host of the Legacy Builders podcast. It’s my personal passion to explore with you these topics related to family wealth.

If you enjoyed today’s episode, you can subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or your preferred podcast platform. And don’t forget to share this episode with family, friends, and colleagues who you care about. If you would like to help support this show, you can do so by leaving a rating and review.

If you have questions about anything shared on today’s episode or have topics you’d like us to dive deeper into in future episodes, please let us know by emailing [email protected] That’s Beacon Family Office at A s s a n t e.com

Legacy Builders: Strategies for Building Successful Family Enterprises is brought to you by Beacon Family Office at Assante. Are you worried about losing what you have created, and seeking ways to transition your wealth across generations? Beacon Family Office at Assante supports our clients transition their wealth while maintaining relationships. If you would like to access more content we have created, you can visit us at BeaconFamilyOffice.com or for more details on our services and to book an initial call.

Thanks again for listening, and until our next episode stay intentional about building your legacy. 

Disclaimer: This program was prepared by Cory Gagnon who is a Senior Wealth Advisor with Beacon Family Office at Assante Financial Management limited. This is not an official program of Assante Financial Management and the statements and opinions expressed during this podcast are not necessarily those of 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 prior to acting on the information presented.