When Legacy Grows Up: Shifting from Founders to Families in Enterprising Wealth

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 Dennis Jaffe, Senior Research Fellow at Banyan Global Family Business Advisors. Based in San Francisco, Dennis advises families globally on family enterprise, governance, and legacy planning. He is the author of Wealth 3.0: The Future of Family Wealth Advising and Borrowed from Your Grandchildren: The Evolution of 100-Year Family Enterprises, along with many more incredible works that have shaped the field. With a Ph.D. in sociology from Yale and decades of experience as a consultant, educator, and researcher, Dennis brings a global perspective and a deep understanding of how values and legacy shape multi-generational success.

My goal is to be the most curious person in today’s conversation with Dennis. We’ll be asking what it really means to pass on more than just wealth and how families can evolve from entrepreneurial roots into something more collaborative, resilient, and values-driven. We’ll also explore what it takes to prepare the next generation, build thoughtful governance, and turn shared values into something truly lived. There’s a lot to unpack, and I’m glad you’re here for it.

Now, let’s dive in!

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

Dennis: Great. I’m ready.

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?

Dennis: Well, I’ve worked with families for my whole career, specifically with family businesses. And I guess what I’ve learned in my work, more and more, is not to do things for the family. As the family calls you up and says, we want you to solve this problem, and, I don’t entirely take that seriously. I say, well, here’s the problem. Let’s talk about how we can work together on that. So I don’t propose solutions, and I don’t solve problems. I help families basically deal with dilemmas, and get together and have conversations.

So, when a family says we’re having trouble, you know, talking to our children or we’re having trouble planning, you know, what’s next for our family, I say, well, let’s set up a conversation. Let’s work together. And, I think the most meaningful thing I do is not to tell people what to do, which I do very rarely, but tell people what other people are doing, and help them consider what’s best for them.

Cory: And in that, Dennis, what other people are doing, you’ve spent some time and done some great research with some of the most successful families who’ve managed to build lasting legacies. So for somebody listening today who’s thinking about their own family business and says, you know, what would set these businesses apart and allow them to thrive over generations going forward?

Dennis: Well, there’s one reality about family business that I keep learning over and over again, which is that it’s about what’s different about a family business. When I say family business, I don’t just mean a business corporation. Sometimes it’s an investment group. Sometimes it’s a real estate group. Sometimes it’s a family office. It’s really families that have shared assets. And what sets them apart is two things that are extraordinarily important and different from public corporations.

The first thing is, the family members have a personal relationship that goes beyond making money. So they aren’t looking at each other and saying, how much money can I make from you, and how can I take advantage of you? They’re saying, this is a person that’s important to me, and of course, we share assets, and we want to make money, and we have to work together. But we have a personal agenda as well. And so family businesses are not just about the business. They’re also about the relationship and what the family wants to do.

The second thing, which is even more important, is that when you have a family business, you want to turn it over to your children, or you want to turn over the benefits, the wealth that you’ve created to the next generation. And so you’re thinking long-term. So family members are not in the business for short term turnover. They’re really looking long-term. So here you have a business where family members have a personal relationship and values that they share, and they’re looking ahead to the future.

This is what we want to see from all corporations. We want to see a long-term perspective. We want to see values and a personal kind of mission. It used to be, we looked to large corporations and said family businesses should be more like large corporations. And right, they should be rational, and they shouldn’t be emotional, and they shouldn’t have all these feelings and things, they should just be rational corporations. Now we’re reversing that and saying, no. Large corporations should be more like family businesses. They should respect their employees. They should take a long term perspective. They should work together, listen to each other, respect each other, have some caring, and also, look ahead long term, not just what have we made this quarter, but how are we setting up a foundation for us long term.

So I learned those two things about family business, and those make all the difference, but they also make a family business much more complicated and much more difficult to run because it isn’t just a business. It’s also an extended family, group of families that have a relationship, that have a future, and that want to use and benefit from the business. So they’re they’re working both as a business and a family, and they have to have governance, and they have to work together as a business, but they also have to work together cooperatively as family members, extended family members, cousins, second cousins, married-ins, mother in-laws, aunts and uncles. And it’s really complicated to balance both, and that’s the work of family advisers like me, to manage both the family and the business. And you can’t just say, well, don’t get emotional, and let’s just be a business. They’re not just a business. They’re much more, and you can’t deny that level of reality.

Cory: And so, Dennis, that shift from let’s make as much money as we can, that raw entrepreneurial thinking, to now we’re looking to pass something on to the next generation. That shift isn’t always easy. What have you found that families who’ve made that transition have done to begin and sustain that?

Dennis: Well, first of all, here’s the thing. So advisors come in and they say, okay, how can the family business make more money? How can we grow it? And they just assume that every family wants to grow the business and make more money. And yet in the second generation, that’s not the full rationale for the business. The family is successful. In the second generation, when the business is successful, they’ve made more money than they ever expected. And so the next generation, they’re wealthy to begin with, they’re not saying, how can we make more money?

What does it mean if you have a $100,000,000 business, or a half a billion dollar business and you make an extra 10%. It means nothing. So the family is asking a different question. They’re saying, how do we use our wealth? What is our wealth for? Now we have more money than we can imagine. What are we going to use it for? What is the purpose? And they begin to say, well, we like the business we’re in. The next generation has some ideas and values, and they want to do some things, and they want to maybe start businesses or do things that are meaningful to them. Sometimes they’re philanthropic. So the family is looking at their values and for the future.

The other difference, and this is a big difference that came out in my research, an entrepreneur is a certain personality type. They’re in charge, and the people that work with them have to understand that reality,  e g, that there’s one boss. And this is the entrepreneurial personality. They’re secretive. They want to do what they want to do. They improvise. So this is the first generation.

The second generation, however, is different. First of all, there’s not one person. There may be two brothers and two sisters. There may be cousins who were partners. And all of a sudden, it’s a complex relationship, and that’s something that the entrepreneur doesn’t know anything about. And so the next generation is faced with, the entrepreneur says, well, I want you to pick a successor, one person. And the family says, that’s ridiculous. We’re all in this together, and we want to work together. That doesn’t mean that everybody is the same. So the next generation has to learn about cooperation, has to ask, what are we doing this for, and has to innovate.

Sometimes the next generation decides to sell the business. Sometimes they start new businesses. Sometimes they redefine the business. So the second generation is a group of people working together, and that’s not the reality of the entrepreneur. So second generation and then third generation family members are very different. And what I find is that the older generation, the entrepreneur, is really confused. They think, well, if I just name a successor, that person will be the king and tell everybody what to do. And  if they name the next generation person, that person doesn’t have the same authority.

Now in the old days, in some traditional societies, they solve that problem by saying, well, the oldest son gets everything, and everybody else gets nothing, or they get charity.  But there’s one person, and it’s the oldest son. That’s pretty much over. Now if you have two sons and three daughters and say your daughter is the best, you have to choose who’s the most capable, but you also have to work together. You can’t just say, okay, this person is in charge because they’re brothers and sisters, and they know each other. They’re not going to just listen to one person.

And so it’s a different situation in the second generation, and I think families don’t really understand how different it is. Particularly the first generation leader, thinks that he, it’s usually a he, can run it just the way he did for years because he was so successful. Therefore, what I did is going to somehow last forever, and it doesn’t. So the next generation has to create a new way of working together, more collaborative and more team-oriented. And the older generation is confused by that. They don’t have any experience there.

Cory: And so, Dennis, did you encounter in the research that you’ve done, any families where they did pass from one generation to the oldest son and have now converted to more of that collaborative thinking as they’ve made the change?

Dennis: They’ve evolved. I mean, often, they start off that way, and they do it. But in the end the answer is, actually I was looking at successful third generation, families that were third generation or beyond. So they were into the third generation. And most of those families did not pass it on to one person. They had to figure out how to do it together. They might have had the leader, but they mostly said, well, we need to figure out what leadership, not the leader. And, one of the things that families found out, for example, is that they didn’t need one leader in the second generation. 

There was a leader in the business, maybe. There was a leader in the family, had real estate, and so they had kind of a real estate leader. There was a leader in family relations, and so they had a family leader. There was a leader in philanthropy. So in a way, the next generation becomes a group of leaders, working together, and there isn’t a single leader in the same way that there was in the first generation.

Cory: And so, Dennis, when advisors talk about families that they’ve met, it’s often said, if you’ve met one family, you’ve met one family, because they all do it differently. And so not having that previous generation as an example, when we’re talking about governance structures and going from that patriarchal style to being more collaborative and transparent, what would you say to that generation who’s listening as they’re they’re trying to make that shift and and really don’t have that example in their family yet, to say this is structures that that maybe will work for us?

Dennis: First of all, this is something that  is in all science. I mean, science takes all the individuality and things like that, and looks for patterns. And to say that every family is unique, well, of course. But then again, if you’re looking at patterns, there are certain patterns, there are certain themes, and there are certain things that these families have in common, and that’s what research is about, finding what are common patterns, so it’s a little bit easier.

What families see is, yes, you cannot run the family the way you did in the first generation. But all over the world, I mean, every place you go, everywhere, every country in the world, every kind of business, they’re all, the basic businesses are family business. And so where do you find models? You find it in your peers. And so, all over, everywhere in the world, there are networks. There are local networks. There are organizations like Family Business Network, where hundreds of families, there’s about 30 chapters. And family members get together and you hear, let’s listen to what other families are doing. And they learn from each other. They create networks. 

The family members go to conferences. They go to colleges and business schools. And in business schools, they meet people from a lot of other family businesses, and they kind of cross-fertilize, rather than look to the older generations. So from as much from the patriarchs as they are learning from each other. I think if you’re a family business going into the second generation, the best thing you can do is go become part of a local network or a business school, or seek out other families if you’re part of an industry group. Every industry group has kind of a family business, internal group. And they get together, and they talk.

Cory: And, Dennis, thinking about subsequent generations, where we’re dealing with those younger family members, maybe there’s some struggle with leadership or, maybe that leading gen is thinking that there’s a sense of entitlement here. From your experience, what work can these young leaders do to step up and take responsibility, and how can the family support them?

Dennis: Well, okay. Everybody asked that. And first of all, here’s an interesting thing. People are afraid here. I’m a patriarch. I’ve got three kids and lots of grandchildren, things like that. And I’ve created my own business and passed it on to them. And so when I talk about being entitled, I never think about myself. I think I’m responsible because I made the money.  And somehow when people talk about entitlement, they’re always talking about their kids. And this is hard to escape because when you’re a parent, you remember your kids. Your kids lived with you when they were irresponsible little kids.

So I’ve got two sons in their fifties. Now I raised them. They grew up with me, so I knew them from, you know, zero to 18 or 20. And that was not their best and most mature time.  So I have two sons who are executives, who are leaders, who work with people, supervise, and make decisions every day. I’ve never seen them at work. So it’s easy for parents to think, my kids aren’t responsible because they don’t see them in these ways. Now, when you have wealth, somehow you feel like you create wealth. You want the best for your kids, and then you start to have your kids, and you start to give them things. And you say, wait a minute. That’s not good. I’m going to spoil them. And it’s kind of an interesting thing.

So when I say you raised your kids, so people say, well, I’m afraid my kids are entitled. I just talked this morning to a parent of a 26 year old, and he said, well, I’m afraid, my daughter’s entitled. And he said, well, she works for an agency, working with underprivileged kids, and she’s getting a master’s in social work. And she’s very dedicated, and she wants to go into social policy. And this is a very, very wealthy person. So tell me, what has your daughter ever done that makes you think that she’s going to be irresponsible and spend all your money? She asked for a little subsidy because it’s hard to live in a big city on wages from working for a nonprofit. So she needs help with rent and things like that. 

So what has she done that’s irresponsible? Well, nothing. So what do you think, that somehow she’s going to find out that you have millions of dollars, and that she’s going to stop working, stop going to graduate school? He said, no. I think she’s not like that. She’s passionate about this. So how do you get the idea? What is it that makes you think your kids are going to do it?

Now there is a problem, and there are families where kids get a lot of things. They get expense accounts. They get cars. They take vacations and things like that, and there’s no control on their spending. And what has happened is the family has a sense of, people get resources, but they don’t have a code in the family about responsibility. And what I believe is that every family, even no matter who you are and how much wealth you have, you have to talk about what do you expect from the next generation in terms of values, in terms of responsibility, and families of wealth. 

I say it isn’t about whether your kids are going to be entitled. It’s about how your family has been incredibly fortunate. You have a great gift that you can give your kids, unlike most people in the world, they don’t have to worry about paying for their education. You can help them get a house to live in. They’ve traveled. They’re incredibly fortunate. And so the question is, whose money is this? And then, if the money is being shared, what’s your responsibility? Are you just supposed to just take it and do nothing, or is there a way that you’re supposed to be responsible?

So for example, here’s a good example. Family members say, we have family meetings, and the next generation doesn’t want to show up. And, again, I’m an elder. So I’m not a young kid. It’s just so I’m saying, so they’re going to become entitled. How do I make them want to come? You say, well, you know, it’s like, you have a wonderful deal and things like that. What’s wrong with saying to your kids, hey, we have wonderful gifts, but it’s really important that we pay attention, that we know and we’re responsible, and that there’s a lot of ways that you can lose money, and we need to have regular family meetings, and everybody has to come. 

And it’s like I would say, If you’re giving your kids, you know, all trusts and things like that, you should say, hey, you are responsible for making it twice a year to family meetings for understanding our business and certain things, and you should expect that there are certain rules. For example, families have rules about confidentiality. They have rules about social media. They have rules about behavior, drugs, alcohol, partying, expectations of behavior when you’re on your own, and the families have a code of conduct. And if you don’t start that early on and say, here’s the responsibilities that family members have, then people, they say, well, then, you know, I don’t hear anything, so I could just do what I want.

Cory: Absolutely! You use the word values, and, I know that you’ve done some work around values, and, I’ve got a deck of cards here that I think you were a part of. And the difference between talking about values and a lot of what you just said is documenting some of that, but also living by those values. So showing this is how we live. So how do we strike that balance of we’ve talked about it, but now we’re actually living it?

Dennis: This morning, I got a thing. This is the Living Your Values book that’s coming out.  And it’s written with me and my wife, Cynthia Scott. We’ve been doing values work for forty years, and we have the values guide. But this is a book about, basically, the problem is people say they have values. And, you know, these are my values. And they don’t really understand that it’s very hard to live by your values. Sometimes one value, contradicts another value.

For example, in businesses, you’re under financial pressure, and you have to let people go, even though you say we value individuals and the people that work for our company, or part of our big family. If there is financial pressure, sometimes you have to say goodbye to people. So the challenge, I think, is that everybody, when they define their values, they then have to say, how am I doing? What am I doing to live each value? And this is a personal thing.

So the book has two parts. Part one, the first half, is about personal values and how to define your personal values and understand. And then you have, like, 10 values. Well, do you pick the value that you like that day and say this is the value? What about the other values? And how do they work together? So there’s a challenge in putting the values together, which is to say what’s your overall mission and purpose. That’s the values together. And then, how do you put them all into action? Which ones are primary? Which ones are secondary? So that’s the first half of the book, and it talks about personal values.

And then, the second half of the book, is about what we call, personal values are your personality and your identity as a person. But shared values are what we call culture. And so a family can have a culture. An organization can have a culture. A community can have a culture. A country can have a culture. It’s the shared values of the larger group. Now here’s the challenge. You have a bunch of personal values, and then you’re part of an extended family, let’s say, with a family business. You don’t have all of your values in the shared values of your family. You, as a person, you’re more than your family. So you have shared values with the family, but there are other things that you do. There are hobbies. There are passions that you have. There are things that you do yourself that you don’t do with the family. And so you invest and you put yourself into a group, and because you share the values, there are times when you’ll feel, for example, at odds with a group. You’re in your family, and you feel like the family is doing things that don’t fit the values. So one of the challenges you have is what do you do? Do you stay quiet? And  you know, do you just kind of look at, say, I don’t agree and withdraw and not spend time with the family? Do you talk to the family about the values, or do you just disassociate yourself?

If you don’t like your organization, you can challenge it and say we need to do better. Or you can leave it. So the idea of culture and values is how do you create a shared culture, and what do you do when you see the group falling short? How do you challenge the group? How do you come to the group and say, I’m not happy. I don’t think we’re living in integrity.

Living your values is something that people say, well, I do that, and they don’t really think. But we’re saying you really have to think about it, and living your values is much harder than people think. It’s not putting the values up on the wall. It’s being able to look every day at what you do and say, these things I’m doing, these choices I’m making reflect the values I have that are important to me and important to other people.

Cory: Right. Now, Dennis, you made a comment about having to let go of employees, and I think balancing that we’re family, and that culture that you’re mentioning, because I think that that’s very key in a lot of family businesses. Where do you see that difference between public business and family business in that resilience and uncertainty around economic times, and where we have to make those hard decisions?

Dennis: Well in the book, we write a lot about that. And, basically, here’s where it comes up. So when you’re in hard times, the company is short of money. Now some companies say, well, they hire a consulting firm, and they lay people off. And they think if you lay a bunch of people off, that’ll somehow make the business solvent, except you lay off your talent, and you don’t have the capability to do what you want to do, or the people that are left have to do twice as much. So it’s a challenge.

Family businesses, because they have the values around people, they sometimes take a different approach. For example, family businesses might get together and say, look, we have a choice. Should we lay people off, or should everybody take a 20% pay cut? And in the family business, that’s the kind of thing that people might actually be voting on or talking about. They might agree to have everybody not work Fridays. There are different ways that families can deal with that, which involve taking into account the value. Sometimes, for example, the family might say, what we’re going to do is invest in training. Since we have downtime and things are slow, we’re going to keep people on, and we’re going to invest in training. That means they’re going to add costs right now. They’re not going to lay people off. And when business bounces back, which they believe will happen, then they will be ready to expand and grow, and this is a choice that they’ve made. So the values come into play, in addition to making money.

Family businesses tend to talk about the challenges and meet them together, whereas the corporate mentality is to hire somebody, lay people off, and cut costs, basically without involving people as much. What I conclude in the book is that actually the family business values and the things are actually very good for non-family businesses. A lot of those values that are in family businesses, the respect for employees, integrity, collaboration, listening, clear policies, those are very good for any business.In the end, I’m back to where I was at the beginning of saying, if more businesses acted like family businesses, they might be better off.

Cory: And so, Dennis, talking about training within the business, what about training within the family, and preparing the family and those younger members to be able to take on leadership in those within the business, and the stewardship within the wealth of the family?

Dennis: Well, this is where we talk about there’s governance of the business, and there’s governance of the family, and this is an area of governance of the family. So the family says, first of all, as we said earlier, we don’t want to have entitled kids. We’re not just giving, sharing our wealth so that people can spend it. We want people to spend wealth, but also to make sure that there is wealth for their grandchildren and the next generation and the generations to come. So we want to create responsible people. We want people that are informed. We want people that make good decisions. We want them to have skills, and we want them to be productive.

What that means is we have to educate and develop our, what we call, rising generations, younger generations, and they invest. We have wealth, and this is something we want to do. We don’t say we’re doing this to make more money. Saying, we have money. We have resources. And what we want to do with it is invest in our next generation family members because we can. So we can send people to programs. We can invite trainers. We can have learning programs together. We can do educational things. We can bring family members coaches. They see investing in the next generation as the way that they want to use their wealth and resources.

Cory: And looking at the example you gave of the conversation you had earlier today, that balancing self and the passions and drive of the individual versus the collective, how do families successfully balance that, where their children are on their own journey and developing themselves, but they’re still part of that family?

Dennis: Well, so here’s the thing. Family businesses, sometimes the elders say, well, I’m going to decide who’s going to work in the business, and I’m going to decide. And they just kind of assume that everybody in the family wants to work in the business. The reality is the family business is one competing thing that the next generation can do, and there’s a lot of other things that they can do. So the family business has to basically demonstrate and recruit family members to get involved in it. Now, the other thing that we see, which is important to realize, is that it is not an either-or decision.

For example, let’s say, well, I’m working, I don’t want to go into the family business. I want to work for a private capital firm and do business development. So they’re doing that. So now does that mean they’re not working for the family, but they might join an investment committee? They might become a board member. So family members have a way. Some family members are full-time parents, working as educators, but they can still be involved in governance.

So family members find that there’s a role for them, no matter what their skills are, and that some family members will find the call, and want to work for the family business because of the values it has. And other people will work outside, but they’ll be involved in governance. They might want to create family meetings. They might want to be involved in philanthropy. They might want to help the family invest some of its wealth, or they might be a board member. So it isn’t an either or thing. And then family members, you can have a role in the family and still work outside, or you can work for the family because it fits who you are and the values that you have.

Cory: Right! And, Dennis, let’s touch on philanthropy for a second because I think that most of the families that you’ve studied, and some of those common traits, philanthropy is an active component of what’s making them successful. Can you touch on why that is?

Dennis: Well, first of all, these families are what we call the 1%. And in society, they’re not popular. But these families have more wealth than they could possibly use. So they ask the question, what’s it for? And they begin to see, well, gee, we have a lot of money. We can live a nice lifestyle, and we can grow the business, but we also have the ability to take some of that money and give it to causes that really make our community better, that make our environment better, that help people that are less fortunate and in pain. We can have a wider impact. 

These families say we have this money. This is where they begin to say, well, rather than be guilty and say, you know, it’s so unfair. We can say, what we’re going to do is we’re going to live nicely, and we appreciate the fact that we’re fortunate, but we’re also going to give a significant amount of money to philanthropy. And then they set up sometimes a family foundation, or they set up a giving, what they call Donor Advised Fund, DAF. And they, the family, works together to say, what do we want to give to that we believe in? This happens naturally in the second and third generation in successful families. They have more money. They have wealth. When they talk about what they want to do, the answer is one of the things they want to do is give to the world.

Cory: Amazing! Now, Dennis, I’m sure there’s so much more we could talk about. But 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 those tough ones?

Dennis: I’m ready.

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

Dennis: You can’t have a family enterprise unless the family members know each other. So I think the one thing that families do that goes across all of them is they’re involved with each other. They spend time together, and they don’t just spend time together, you know, playing golf and going to concerts and having dinners together. They also talk about important things. So cross-generational engagement and talking about the things that matter is the thing that I see that makes up successful families.

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

Dennis: There’s always a thing on the horizon, and that is that we’ve made a lot of money. We’ve had a good business. Why don’t we just sell it, give everybody a check, and let everybody go off on their own? And many, many families, that’s what they do. Basically everybody goes their own way because they don’t have anything that they want to do together. They want to have Christmas dinner or things like that, but they don’t have a common thing, so they go off on their own. And this is not a terrible thing, having a lot of money that you inherit and take your own. This is a natural thing. So, families are always having to say, well, if we want to stay together, how do we do it? Or they’re not going to stay together.

Cory: Right. Now, Dennis, you mentioned selling the business, and oftentimes that selling the business does mean that everyone receives a check. What about families who have sold the business but actually stayed together because they want to?

Dennis: Well, it’s a choice. In my study of a 100 families, about half of them had sold the legacy business, but they continued to be shared investors because they wanted to stay together, and this was a nice way to do it. And so they formed a family office, or they bought another business, or they bought several businesses. But they shared investments together rather than all went off. But when you sell the business, very often the family has to get together and say, now do we want to continue?

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

Dennis: I think that leaders have to go from being a leader in the sense of making decisions, to be people that have the ability to collaborate and listen, not just to their family, but to their employees, to other people. So it’s what we call emotional intelligence, the ability to collaborate, listen, and respect other people. And that’s a quality that sometimes entrepreneurs don’t have. We see that today, but it’s really essential in a family business.

Cory: Amazing! And before we conclude our discussion, I’d like to highlight where our listeners can engage in more conversations, or find more of the information of what you and I talked about today.

Dennis: Well, one thing. So I’ve written a number of books. The Values book is coming out, and the Hundred Year Study is from a big book. It’s a lot of pages, called Borrowed From Your Grandchildren, which is about long term, it’s about hundred year families. And I studied a hundred year families, and this is a story of those families. But the things that they do are things these families remember back when they were first generation, and their stories tell what they did in the first generation to make them remain around in the third and fourth generation.

Cory: Amazing! And the plug on the Values book, Dennis, the title, can we just mention that one again?

Dennis: It’s Living Your Values. It’ll be out in about six weeks. It’s a practical book. There’s a lot of what we call learning journeys in it, which show how to define your values, how to understand your values, how to create a personal mission and purpose statement, how to create shared family values, how to work, creative family values in an organization. It’s a “how to” book.

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

Dennis: We’ve covered a lot of topics, so, I’ve touched on a lot of things. I could go deeper in many of them and the challenges, but, basically, the framework, I think, I’ve been able to lay out.

Cory: Fantastic! Well, thank you, Dennis. I appreciate your time today to share your expertise, experiences, and all those stories that you collected in the book that you were able to bring into our quite short conversation today. So incredibly valuable to myself, and I’m grateful for your contribution and I know our listeners will as well.

Dennis: Well, thank you, Cory. It’s been a delight to talk to you and to be part of this podcast.

As we wrap up this episode, we invite you to reflect on Dennis’s reminder that family enterprises are shaped by relationships, long-term thinking, and the everyday choices that prepare the next generation to lead with clarity and care.

Whether you’re part of a family enterprise or work alongside enterprising families, his perspective challenges us to see beyond legacy as inheritance, and instead view it as an evolving culture shaped by values, built through cooperation, and sustained by purpose.

Throughout our conversation, Dennis offered a grounded perspective on what helps family enterprises grow and endure. He spoke to the importance of preparing the next generation with clarity of purpose and a shared commitment to values. And he reminded us that legacy isn’t preserved by holding on to old structures, but by how families adapt, make decisions together, and stay connected through change.

If you’re exploring how to help your family lead across generations with purpose and clarity, Dennis Jaffe’s decades of research and writing offer so many deep insights. You’ll find links to his books, articles, and 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.