Past, Present, and Possibility: Reimagining Legacy Through Story

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 Julia Chung, Co‑Founder and CEO of Spring Planning. She serves as Board Director and FEA Community Council Chair at Family Enterprise Canada, and currently chairs the Financial Planning Association of Canada’s Board. Julia has co‑authored three eBooks: Women & Money, The Art of Delegation, and The Entrepreneur’s Survival Guide, reflecting her ability to make complex ideas approachable and useful in real-world decisions.

My goal is to be the most curious person in today’s conversation with Julia. Where we talk about how imagining the future from the very end can shift the choices we make today, and why turning inward often reveals what truly matters. Julia helps us explore how legacy takes root in the stories we tell and how families grow stronger when they make room for both individual expression and shared responsibility.

Now, let’s dive in!

Cory: Welcome, Julia. We’re excited to have you here today to share your wealth of knowledge and experiences with us. Let’s dive in, shall we?

Julia: Yes. Great to be here.

Cory: Imagine you’re delivering the commencement speech to the graduating class of 2025, 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?

Julia: That’s always a tough one. But I think what I would communicate to people is that as they’re building their own lives and their own careers, I want them to always be thinking about their own future selves, the person that they’re going to be at the end of their lives, perhaps they’re in their eighties or their nineties, or given how long this generation is living, maybe into the triple digits. And I want them to really consider that person, and what that person is going to be thinking about when they look back over their own lives.

In my life, I’ve had the opportunity to work with a lot of people who are at that stage in their life, also, my mom worked in elder care. So I got to speak to a lot of people at that stage when I was quite young, the their perspectives on their lives, the meaning that it held, the legacy that they’ve left, if small or large, the impact that they’ve had on other people, and the joy they’ve experienced in their own lives were the things that are most meaningful.

As I’ve gone through my own life and I’ve worked with a variety of people, I’ve thought about my own grandparents as they went through their various stages of life. And I lost my mom when she was very young. And I think about the impact that she managed to have in only 41. That sort of model has always been held up to me as something I’m always thinking about, something that I think is really important. Who do we want to be in the world? And that’s the way we should be designing our lives, on our impact. So that’s what I hope for a graduating class as they move on to their next stage in life, that they’re building lives that they can be incredibly proud of when they’re at the end of it.

Cory: Amazing! And so tell me that perspective on looking back. So somebody who’s maybe twenty years, thirty years into their life, depending on this commencement speech, they could be in high school, or a program that they’re graduating from. And now you’re asking them to imagine from the end. What does looking back from the end really signify for you, and why is that so important?

Julia: I think because it’s really hard as humans to to think beyond today and yesterday. It’s really hard for us to imagine that, and it’s hard for us to, especially at that age where we’re embarking on a career or the early stages of our lives, know it’s going to be important, and we start choosing from what other people have put out for us.

Okay, maybe it looks like this. Maybe a good life looks like that. All these different representations that we’ve seen in the world, whether through marketing, through our own family, or just social norms, what is it to live a good life? And they really don’t know. And what I want people to do is, instead of looking externally, they’re looking internally. And if they’re imagining that version of themselves at the end of their lives, they are looking internally. They are saying, who am I? And what do I value? And what’s going to be important to me? And I think if all of us manage to take that direction in our lives where we really focus on those internal sources of meaning, we’ll be able to have better direction in our lives. We might be able to make better choices.

Cory: Right. And so it intrigued me when you were talking about influences and used the word marketing. And so all of those things that others are telling us, that might be within our family, but then there’s so many societal pressures. What do you think that clearing those out means?

And what do you think that some of those pressures bring to who we are as people and how we lead our lives?

Julia: Well, humans are community creatures. If we go back to the beginning of time, human beings only did well when we were interacting with other human beings and we were working together. And so our brains are still kind of focused there. We want to interact with other human beings, and the concept of status within those human beings is really important. And a lot of times in our society, we think status might be sort of, many things that are shown as status focused in our society, things about monetary wealth and financial gain.

But status, when we really break it down, which is important to everybody, is how am I seen in my community of people that are important to me, and what does that community value? And because survival in ancient versions of ourselves meant that we really had to get along with these people, that tends to supersede paying attention to what’s important to us as an individual, because survival said we had to stick with these people. We want them to like us. We want them to think we’re important so they will keep us alive. And so that instinct isn’t gone. But what happens in the current society if we’re only paying attention to that is that we never pay attention to what’s valuable to us, and we can live a life that is not meaningful and is not powerful. And that seems to me like one of the biggest tragedies.

Cory: And so thinking about looking inwards and finding that meaning, comparing it to survival, because I think that we have this privilege today, that as we evolve as a species, we create all these great things that keep us alive longer and allow us to thrive without as much fear. That being said, there are many things out there that we still haven’t figured out. But looking inwards, what more do you think that people can bring if they’ve cleared out everything else that’s distracting?

Julia: So much! I always think that when I meet a person, there’s something really special about every person that they bring to our society and our community. And often, they haven’t spent any time figuring out what that is. Imagine you’re somebody who’d be a world class bobsled racer, but you happen to be born in Jamaica. How will you ever know? And so I think that it’s worth figuring that out because I do think that we are created to be within a community where each of us can bring our uniqueness to that community.

And that is not only valuable to us, and brings us joy, and makes us a good individual life. It’s so valuable to our communities, our families, the society we live in, that we find that and we bring it to the world. So that looking inward and realizing that you are a unique human being in some way, shape, or form. And that that thing you bring, whether it fits into a box that already exists, which, hey, that’d be cool, or if you have to carve out your own box, or find a way to tweak it so that it’s a slightly different shape. I just think it’s so important, and it’s important to the individual, but it’s also important to the society because when you think about how we continue to evolve, and we continue to make great strides, and we learn new things and make a better world, hopefully, it’s because we’re paying attention to those things. It’s because we’re using those uniqueness’s that are apparent in every person.

Cory: Right! I love that, hopefully, because we are hopefully making the world a better place, and we don’t know until we’re done.

So I think, going back to the beginning of looking back over it, you don’t know until it’s actually over. And then it’s like, you know what? It is a better place. So Julia, going back to that privilege of “we get to choose.” We have agency now of the people that we surround ourselves with. And so choosing and speaking to family enterprises, we’re choosing to actually continue to be a part of this with our family. And so what is it that we can take from those survival instincts to actually thrive? And what is it that we need to change in our environment today because we’re not forced to be here, we’re choosing to be here?

Julia: It is so interesting within the concept of families and family enterprise. So I’m lucky enough to be a member of a family that has an almost one thousand year written history, and has always interacted.

My family founded a city in China, and it’s been going strong for almost a millennium. And just knowing that we’re all part of histories like that, whether it’s written or not, I think that’s important for people to remember. And those systems of human interaction thrive when we do a really good job of recognizing the individual strengths that each person brings to that equation. And when we’re looking within a family enterprise, the business system, any kind of community, we are really benefiting from that human capital that each person can bring to that entire system. And what would be great for that family, for that enterprise, for that community is if we do the work of recognizing the individual as well as their part in the greater collective.

My one side of the family is Chinese, which is a very collectivist kind of society, and the other side is British, which is pretty individualistic. And so that’s a perspective I’ve often thought about being raised here in Canada, and specifically in Vancouver, where we have very strong influences of both those two different societies, is like how do we benefit from the strengths and reduce the weaknesses of each? And I do think it is recognizing that both the collective and the individual are important and that we need to understand and build upon the strengths of both, not that just one is better than the other.

Cory: Right! And so going back to your comment of stories being documented or not, let’s talk a little bit about the importance of documenting those stories. And if they’re not documented, what can we do?

Julia: We could start documenting, first of all. I think so many people don’t believe that their own stories are important. But as a person who is deeply interested in humans, I would like to know everybody’s story, and I would like to know how you got there.

Growing up, I’m lucky enough to have on both sides of my family, people who told stories about their parents and grandparents and people way back. And one thing that we have to remember is that if there’s nobody left alive who knows that person, and if we haven’t written it down, then the story does die. And not having that story leaves a hole for people.

So in 2013, my Chinese family went back to our city to do sort of the annual sweeping of the graves thing that happens. And there were many people there, and we all came together. That was my son’s first trip to have that experience. And I remember watching him and seeing that sort of connection where he’s like, I’m part of something bigger. And that doesn’t necessarily make me better than anybody else or anything like that. But, not only is that “this is a place I belong,” which is super important for people, but also, I have a responsibility to a certain extent. I can see what’s happened. I can see what I’m a part of. I can see there’s resources that were built in the human beings that came before me. There’s things they learned. There’s things they shared, and that’s all here. And I just watched it sink into him when he was about 15, so it was probably a lot. But that is so valuable when you’re learning how to be a person to be able to say, “I get where this comes from.”

I understand that people can grow up in this system, and there can be so many different ways of showing up in that system, and all of them are okay, ideally. If you have a system that allows for that, that gives you not only strength, because you’ve got some foundation to build on, but also that freedom to say, “I can be a lot of different ways, and I’m still valuable here.” 

Cory: And so “I’m part of something bigger.” What is it that you’ve seen in family enterprises where they’ve maybe taken this? Maybe they’ve documented stories. Maybe they bring storytelling part of tradition and rituals. And maybe maybe that isn’t. But what are ways that you’ve seen that they’ve taken that and and had that sense of responsibility ingrained, rather than saying you need to be responsible, but actually showing. And do you have any stories where it’s like, man, that was awesome, or that is incredible, that they managed to do that?

Julia: I think my favorite group of people that have done this really well is actually first nations. and first nations communities are very much run like family enterprises. I was lucky enough to go to a daycare in a first nations community and spend a lot of time there. And it starts so young. It starts so incredibly young. They have so many stories that, in that particular nation that I was spending time with, it goes back to, like, “grandmother beaver and the raven” and that sort of thing. And maybe other people’s family stories don’t go back that far. But telling children through story that they belong, and that they are a part of a system where they can have meaning, and show-telling different stories about how different people show up within that system, that gives children and people growing into becoming adults really kind of a sense of “I have the opportunity to be a lot of different ways.” And, again, that can be valuable.

I think one of the places where it’s tough is where those families don’t have a lot of stories, and maybe we’ve had one or two generations where somebody loomed really large. So there’s only one story. And it feels like that’s the only way I can show up in this system is I’ve got to be as good as this colossal figure, which is basically impossible because I’m an entirely different person.

If we don’t have different stories, then that can be really difficult for people. So I think it’s important to give people that, because they say, just even in media and entertainment, they say representation matters, and we look to things like seeing women and minorities, and all kinds of different people showing up in entertainment that also matters in our family. We have to be able to tell people how okay it is to be yourself. Or else if we don’t do that, what we’re doing is closing doors on those people. We’re telling them that there’s only one way to be, and that’s not that’s not safe for anyone.

Cory: Right! And so if we’re living this story, and the story is being told and as it’s being heard, it’s wow, I’m living in the shadows of something that seems so daunting to ever have that story include my successes.

And so I love how we’ve talked about three different cultures. We’ve leaned on the indigenous people of Canada. We’ve talked about Chinese culture and the British. Where can we get that strength as an individual to say, this story means something to me, but it doesn’t define me?

Where can we tell those stories in a way that leaves that space?

Julia: I think it’s about having many stories. And the thing is, I know in Canada, for a lot of people, we only have stories maybe back a generation or two generations. There’s a lot of people who don’t have that spoken or written family history, or maybe the stories aren’t that great. Not everybody has really great stories. I think it’s really important that we find stories. So just because they didn’t belong to maybe your specific family, where can we find stories? Where can we demonstrate to people that there’s a lot of different ways that you can show up and have value, and that those are respected in the system that we work within?

The way that human beings are kind of wired to understand things is through storytelling. My grandfather on the British side of my family was a professor in drama and education. And he always said that if we use storytelling, we’re communicating so much more than if we’re just passively reading something by ourselves. Even if we’ve done that, we should be talking about it. We should be communicating because those stories help us define ourselves and our place in the world. So if you’re looking at your family or your family enterprise and you’re like, I don’t like this story, or there aren’t enough stories, then I think it’s really worthwhile to go and collect some because they are everywhere.

And there’s so many. And if you have somebody who’s growing up in your family, maybe you have a family where everybody is a scientist and suddenly an artist pops out and you’re like, goodness, how do I communicate to this person that they belong? How do I find pathways? And some of those is finding stories outside of your family, but also just even finding commonalities. Like, cousin Joe is also a scientist, but he’s really different from the rest of the family in this way. And we think that’s valuable. We think that shows up and that supports our family in this way. I mean, just taking the effort to look for those things in the different people that are in your family system or around it, I think, is so important in raising children to feel like they belong.

Cory: Now you made comment about not liking a story. And so if that story has been told, and now we’re saying, maybe this doesn’t define us well and doesn’t inspire, maybe doesn’t give the space to that individual. How do we honor the past while also creating something that we believe will work better for us?

Julia: So the cool thing about bad stories is that it gives people room to make mistakes, or to call out something that’s terrible. I’ve made lots of mistakes in my life, and I often say to my son, hey, if I can’t be a good example, I can be a red flag that you can look for. You’re like, “don’t want to do that.” So I think we can kind of do sort of the same thing. Certainly as we evolve as a society, we can often look back at something that was super okay in the 1920s that was like, that is horrifying right now. We should not hide it. We should say this happened. Here’s why we don’t like it now. We just recognize that society has changed. We’ve developed a different moral code and system, and here’s what we’re going to do going forward. Because one of the things that we should teach children and adults and all kinds of people is that you can make a mistake, you can be held accountable for it, and you can grow as a person.

If we can do that as individuals and as families, we’re demonstrating something really positive to all the generations that follow us. Because doing things like hiding stuff, you know, there’s so many stories certainly in families about, looks like we were a slave owning family, or it looks like some of my ancestors were part of that Anti-Chinese League. That’s terrible, and all of that exists in every family, every single one. You might have somebody who had some very serious problems that hurt other people in your family. We need to talk about it, and we need to say, this happened, and this is how we’re going to move forward from that point, but we’re not going to hide from it, because when you hide it, somebody’s going to find it. And then they’re going to be mad. They’re going to be so mad that you didn’t tell them about it. So we have to find a way to bring things out in the open and say, you know, what can we learn? Good, bad, indifferent, what do we learn? How do we move forward from this point in a positive way?

Cory: Right! And you made comment about a new moral code, and it makes me think of, there’s a lot of work that families do to continue to support the system and be good stewards moving forward. And so revisiting some of that, have you seen where it’s like, this has served us well, but maybe it’s time to make an adjustment?

Julia: Yes, particularly in a lot of British Columbia families where, if there’s a multigenerational business or lines of business that have been in the family for generations, a lot of times that business was resource heavy. And it may not have been the most environmentally positive thing which, as we move forward in the last fifty to a hundred years, things like environmental care become more and more important, certainly to younger and younger generations. And so being able to say, that made sense with what we knew at the time, it definitely got us here. And it’s given us the opportunity or the resources to say, maybe we’re a leader in this field. Let’s find a way to do it that no longer harms, whether it’s the environment, or a group of people, or something else where you look backwards and you’re like, that wasn’t cool.

There’s a family that I work with that has done a lot of work in forestry. So mills, producing wood products and that kind of stuff. And as they’re going forward, because they’re thinking multigenerational, it’s not just like, that kind of sucked and we need to be better. It’s also, we want this to be sustainable. We’re thinking about five generations into the future, and we want a forest to be here. So how are we developing systems that support that? And I think that’s one of the wonderful things about multigenerational families that do work together, is that we’re able to hopefully think beyond ourselves and our own generation into the future. And that actually makes us not only stewards of things like wealth and businesses and family stories, but stewards of the world we live in and the impact that we can make on every part of society.

Cory: And so, Julia, somebody who’s listening to us who’s thinking, this business might not be sustainable. And what’s got us here, it probably has a bit of legs left to it, but probably not going to get the next generation to where we want them to be. Where have you seen that shift where it’s not throw it all out the window and start over?

Julia: I think that this is a really important thing for a lot of Canadian family enterprises, because Canada on the global scale, it’s just not that old. And so for a lot of families that are dealing with this kind of thing, they maybe have just realized that they’re a family business. They’re like, I guess that’s a thing. That’s like a title we have now. And now there’s all these other things that people are talking to us about, like stewarding things, and I just thought we were running a business. And now I’m confused. And does that mean we have to run this particular business forever?

And for a lot of families, I do tend to reflect back on the family that I’m a part of and say, you know, people have asked me, which generation are you? G one, g two, g three? I’m like, I don’t know. G 40? I have no idea. I haven’t counted. And then they’re like, what line of business is your family? And I’m like, all of them? And that’s kind of the thing that I think would be useful for us to think about as we recognize where we came from and look out to where we’re going. Let’s try to break down the walls and boundaries that exist there and say, yes, that place was great, and it got us here. And as we look forward into building out, you know, what’s happening next in the next generation, what are the tools and resources that we’re going to use?

And let’s try to be as neutral as possible about those tools and resources. We can value them and say this was great. My grandfather had a wonderful restaurant in Hong Kong that was opened in 1950, and lasted until about 2018, and it was important. It was a place where all of our family came together. Eventually, it shut down because it wasn’t where we’re going anymore. But we remember and honor that restaurant. We understand what was important about it. We’ve kept the recipes. Those things still matter, and they brought us to this point.

And, you know, everybody in the next generations of families, we haven’t seen a restaurateur yet, although if somebody decides they want to, we’ve got stuff. But we’ve got other people in different lines of businesses. So how do we use these resources to fund what the next generation is doing and still stay true to what it is that it means to be a member of this family? And if we’ve defined that fairly well, like, our family values are around things like, well, for my grandma just having more babies as she told my son recently. Like, where’s next generation? 

But everybody’s got something that is meaningful, and I think it doesn’t have to be attached to one line of business, or even one line of scholarly activities. Again, on my mom’s side of the family, there’s theater, drama, and academia, and it’s okay to be in any kind of academia, or no academia, or a line of business, or some music, who knows? But what we are is always a family. And within that family, we have many people who are valuable. So if we’re asking questions and staying attached to each other and say, you know, my son has three different startups going on right now, And so everybody in the family is like, so what are you doing? Where do you need support? That one sounds stupid. Those kinds of things are happening all the time because the value of our family system is we have cool people who know cool things, who are open to helping each other. And the way that we do it needs to morph and change as we grow and continue through the generations.

Cory: Yeah! I love the actual part of this, but I think that there’s a great metaphor in that your family kept the recipes. And so what do you think that means in other families? Where can they say, hey, we kept the recipes too?

Julia: To build on that metaphor a little bit, like, what was great about the food that was served in my grandfather’s restaurant? What was unique about it? And there were a couple of things. Our family originates from Northern China, which is not that unusual. It was not that usual in Hong Kong, mostly Southern China people. And so the food that we were serving was very different. It was the food that came from our home city, that generations of people in my family have been cooking for a long time. And so those recipes that were brought to the restaurant and then improved upon in the restaurant and that, you know, people wrote reviews about, which I have snapshotted and saved online because they were so funny. But that’s our family history, and that’s really interesting. And so, you know, when my younger cousin goes to make some, I think what people call Mongolian Beef Pockets, at home, that’s that’s an important thing.

We’re eating together and whether that was, you know, my grandfather’s grandmother’s recipe that was perfected and improved on by my grandfather and then by my uncle. And then the next generation is doing that again. That makes us all feel like home, and that matters. I mean, I think about the other side of my family where literally nobody can cook, and we should not eat their cooking. But what we do share is stories. And there are many people who have written books on that side of my family. Some of them have been published, and some of them have not been, but we have them all, and we share them with each other. We have photos and newspaper clippings, and all of these things are considered valuable, passed down, and talked about in our family. And there’s moments in time that we share that.

You know, most families have those ritual celebrations where we get together. It might be Yom Kippur. It might be Christmas. It might be Chinese New Year. Certainly, Remembrance Day is a pretty big deal in my family because I have two grandfathers who were, and a great grandfather involved in all the great wars. And so, when Remembrance Day happens, we actually break out the written stories that were unpublished and shared in the family, and we talk about that. Every family has those things, and we can all find ways to share them and pass them on.

Cory: Fantastic! Now, Julia, as we’re nearing the end of our conversation, there’s a few questions that I ask each guest. Are you ready for the tough ones?

Julia: Yes!

Cory: What is one key strategy that you believe is most essential for building a successful family enterprise?

Julia: So I was thinking about this, and I’m not sure if it counts as a strategy, but it’s an approach. And it’s something called Cathedral Thinking. So it’s about recognizing that as we’re moving forward and as we’re looking backwards, we’re building on something. So cathedrals traditionally take hundreds of years to build. There’s, I think, one in Spain that’s been built for hundreds of years and is still not done. And people still go visit it because it is valuable. It’s a work in constant progress. And the original design and then the slow improvements as things change were based on things that happened hundreds of years ago. 

And the adjustments are being based on, okay, we understand the original vision, and also we need to tweak some things because life has changed. And then also it’s probably not going to be finished during my lifetime. So what am I leaving to the next people who have this work to continue? And I think if we think about what we’re doing inside a family system, a family enterprise in that way, where did we come from? What was the original vision? What parts of those are we keeping? What parts of those no longer apply in the world we are in today? And then thinking forward to, and then what am I leaving? What am I making easier for? What can be built upon by the next generation? Are we able to think about yesterday, today, and tomorrow all at the same time?

It’s really hard, but that, I think, is essential for family enterprises.

Cory: I love that, wow! I think, How often do we see infrastructure that’s not built for tomorrow? It’s just built for today and many different things. So I love that, Cathedral Thinking. I’ll do some research, Julia. Thank you.

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

Julia: I think it is that difficulty withholding all of these competing ideas in our brains. I was just saying, this essential approach. It’s really hard to really do a good job about thinking about the past, the present, and the future, and all the different stakeholders within that system all at the same time. It’s incredibly challenging, and we don’t value it. We don’t value it very much in our society. So our society is very much about quick gratification. We’re, you know, in Canada and with our southern neighbors is very much an individualistic approach. What’s mine is mine. We don’t want to do too much for the next generation. We’re going to spoil them. All these kinds of things, it’s a really hard thing to to think about and leave space for in our family systems.

You know, I talk to people like, yes. we’re going to have family meetings, and they’re like, great. We had a meeting. Good. We did the thing. And I was like, that’s a place where we’re trying to carve out space for this incredibly difficult type of thinking. A behavioral scientist friend of mine says it’s the most cognitively expensive thing that we can do. You think about your brain using power. It’s using all the possible power that your body can produce to be holding all of these different perspectives, and all of these competing ideas at the same time. And very often, we’re trying to fit it into a six hour day once a year if we’re doing a good job. So it’s incredibly challenging, and carving out enough time and saying that it is valuable even though it’s slow moving, and it never feels like it’s kind of at an end. And where is my dopamine hit from this?

I could just go out and make some money at my business, or I could just forget about it and it would be so much easier to do something shorter term and smaller. I mean, our brains are even wired to go over easy things. So how do we fight against all of those competing things to face this challenge of thinking differently, thinking long term, and giving it the space to breathe? So hard.

Cory: Yes, how do you get that dopamine? I think that’s up to us to figure out how to facilitate and include that in those days.

Julia: Yeah and learn the people that you’re working with, what gives them dopamine, how much rest do they need, and what components of this are they going to be able to really add to, and what’s gonna make them feel bad. It’s a lot.

Cory: And in your experience, what are the top three key qualities that successful family enterprise leaders possess?

Julia: These are tough, but I kind of broke it down to humility being kind of the first one. A lot of times in our society, we laud leaders. They’re so cool. CEOs have become superstars, which I think is very weird. Being a leader is not cool. It’s important. It’s a responsibility, but it’s hard, it shouldn’t be taken lightly, and it shouldn’t be taken with a, like, “I’ve arrived and now I’m the most important person in the room.” When you become a leader, you become the least important person in the room.

You know, when I opened up my first business, my dad was like, you’ve gone from having one boss to hundreds. Have a good time. And it’s like that sort of humility where we recognize that as a leader we are there to serve I think is really important. I think having that kind of empathy and compassion where we see people, and we hear people, and we recognize the value that they bring to a situation, and we bring that into the greater system, because that’s what a leader is doing, is bringing the system together.

And then finally, powerful communication skills. And a lot of times when people think communication, they’re thinking outward. The thing that I’m doing right now, talking at you. But what we need to be doing is looking as a leader saying, what are all the different systems of communication that are happening within the greater system? What’s the systems of communication that are happening between you and I right now? There’s some visual ones. There’s some tone ones. There’s the actual words that are coming out of my mouth. So there’s that complexity in one-on-one, and then we build out into greater systems and different groups of people. And how’s the communication happening between all of those? If a leader can do a great job with that humility, compassion, and communication, they’re going to do really well, and I have so much sympathy for them because it’s very hard.

Cory: Yes, absolutely, very hard. And before we conclude our discussion, I’d like to highlight where our listeners can engage in more of the conversations that you’re having, or any materials that are maybe important or relevant to the conversations we had. Where can our guests find you, Julia?

Julia: If you’re looking for resources and materials, I am on the board of Family Enterprise Canada, and I highly highly recommend joining. There’s so many rich resources there. We’ve got so many tools and information, the opportunities, I think there’s lots to be found there.

You can definitely find me at my website at springplans.ca, and all over the Internet, Julia Chung.

Cory: Awesome! And I wanted to make sure that we covered everything. Is there anything else that you’d like to share with our audience that maybe we didn’t get a chance to touch on?

Julia: One thing that I would love people to think about is what makes life good. There is some great research from Daniel Kahneman about actually the five key facets of a flourishing life, which are positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning, and advancement. So the acronym is PERMA. When you are building a good life for you and thinking about the good lives that you’re helping to build for the people around you, think about PERMA. Think about all those components, and how are we filtering that into all the other decisions that we’re making.

Cory: Fantastic! I love acronyms. It’s easier to remember. But, yes, I think so often that intentionality, what I heard there is being intentional of what we were creating.

Julia: Live a life that you planned on having.

Cory: Well, thank you, Julia. Thank you for taking the time. Thank you for sharing the stories and so much expertise that goes into what you shared today, many years of collecting all that wisdom. And so I found it very valuable, the time that we spent. And I know that our listeners will also find some great value from all the different aspects of our conversation. We sure covered a lot.

Julia: Well, thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.

As we wrap up this episode, we invite you to take a moment to reflect on Julia’s invitation to look inward to imagine the view from the end of your life, and consider how that perspective might bring clarity to the choices you’re facing now.

Whether you’re part of a family enterprise or work alongside enterprising families, her perspective reminds us that meaningful direction often starts not with outside expectations, but with a deeper alignment to values that stand the test of time.

Throughout our conversation, Julia offered a thoughtful lens on legacy, identity, and agency. She reminded us that “status is how we’re seen by the people who matter to us” and that each of us has something unique to contribute to the communities we’re part of, if we’re willing to uncover it. Her reflections on belonging, storytelling, and our capacity to grow invite us to consider not just where we’ve come from, but how we choose to shape what comes next.

If you’re thinking about how to align decisions with values that matter for yourself, your clients, or your family, Julia Chung and the team at Spring Planning bring experience and grounded guidance to that work. You’ll find links to her eBooks as well as her contact details in the show notes.

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 BeaconFamilyOffice@Assante.com or visit BeaconFamilyOffice.com to discuss your particular circumstances before acting on the information presented.