What Is a Family Office? Managing Complexity Across Generations

What Is a Family Office? Managing Complexity Across Generations

For many families, success creates new challenges. The systems, relationships, and decision-making processes that help build wealth are often not the same systems required to steward it. What begins as a business, a portfolio, or a collection of successful investments eventually becomes something more complex, requiring coordination across entities, advisors, generations, and increasingly diverse family interests. In this episode, John Christensen, JD, CFP®, and Cameron Bond, CFP®, sit down with family office attorney Taylor Smith to explore one of the most misunderstood concepts in the wealth management industry: the family office. The conversation examines the purpose behind family office structures, the differences between single-family and multi-family offices, and the governance challenges that emerge as wealth grows. Taylor explains how family offices serve as the strategic center of complex family enterprises, coordinating assets, advisors, trusts, tax planning, charitable giving, and family decision-making across generations. The discussion also explores a reality many successful multi-generational families eventually encounter: preserving wealth is often easier than preparing the people who will eventually inherit it. As complexity increases, governance, communication, education, and alignment become just as important as investment returns and tax planning. This episode is for founders, business owners, and families of multi-generational wealth who are beginning to recognize that accumulation is only one phase of the journey. The next challenge is building structures that can support the family, the enterprise, and the relationships that connect them for generations to come. You can connect with Taylor directly at tsmith@goodspeedmerrill.com or find her on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/taylorsmithtax/. [https://www.linkedin.com/in/taylorsmithtax/]

Revocable vs. Irrevocable Trusts | What Families Must Know

For families of multi-generational wealth, estate planning rarely fails because the documents are wrong. There are in essence three levels of estate planning, which are defined and determined by the wealth or future wealth of an individual or family. The generally accepted levels of wealth that determine the type of estate plan are: 1) those with a net worth comfortably below the estate, gift, and generation-skipping transfer (GST) tax exemptions ($0 to $10 million), 2) those with a net worth approaching the estate, gift, and generation-skipping transfer (GST) tax exemption ($10 million), and 3) those with a net worth greater than the estate, gift, and GST tax exemptions (over $15 million for an individual and over $30 million for a couple). For each level of wealth, an irrevocable trust can be a beneficial structure, which has a multitude of benefits. Whether a trust is revocable or irrevocable can be confusing and misunderstood. In this episode, John Christensen, JD, CFP®, and Cameron Bond, CFP®, sit down with Erin Anderson, an estate and tax planning attorney at Kembell Woods & Martinsen, to unpack how these structures can be so powerful and beneficial. The conversation covers grantor trust taxation, intentionally defective grantor trusts (IDGTs), valuation discounts on closely held business interests, generation-skipping structures, and the governance risks that emerge when trust design and business succession planning are treated as separate conversations. This episode is for founders managing pre-liquidity planning, trustees navigating distribution decisions, and rising-generation family members who are beginning to understand the architecture of what they will eventually steward.

Life After the Exit: What Comes Next for Founders and Families

Succession planning is often treated as a technical process, but for many leaders and families, the real challenge begins after the plan is in place. In this episode of the StoryLens Podcast, the StoryOne team sits down with Dan Deeble of Lost Ball Consulting to explore the deeper realities of leadership transition, business exit, and life after a liquidity event. The conversation focuses on the shift from building something for yourself to investing in others, and why identity, purpose, and family dynamics ultimately determine whether succession leads to continuity or disorientation. For founders, family enterprises, and family offices navigating transition, this episode highlights why clarity of purpose is essential to making any succession plan actually work. You can connect with Dan on LinkedIn or reach out to him directly at dan.deeble@lostballconsulting.com

You're Their Biggest Client. That's the Problem.

Most families of multi-generational wealth and most business owners believe they have the right team around them. And in many cases, they're right, for where they were ten years ago. The financial advisor who built the investment framework, the estate attorney who drafted the plan, the CPA who has handled the returns since the business was half this size, they all did real work. The question isn't whether that team served you then. The question is whether it's built for what you've become and where you're headed. Every profession has tiers. The CPA who is excellent at $3M of business income may not be the CPA who lives inside the $30M business structures with multi-entity planning and generational transfer. The estate attorney who does a great job for the $1M family may not be the attorney who has spent a career inside complex business succession and dynasty trust design. The financial advisor who built a solid practice may be working on commission, recommending products, and operating without a fiduciary obligation to the family. None of these are moral failures. They are specialization gaps, and the family that crossed the threshold years ago but never updated the team is the one bearing the cost.In this episode, the StoryOne team sits down with attorney Taylor Smith to examine one of the most structurally predictable and least-discussed failures in wealth management: the individual or business owner that has outgrown its current advisory structure, but the financial advisor, CPA, and estate attorney haven't said so. The conversation covers what those gaps actually look like, why nobody surfaces them, and what families at the $30M to $100M+ level should be asking but almost never do.

When Success Stops Working

Many founders and families of multi-generational wealth reach a point where the financial architecture is in place, but something is still not working. Not broken. Not in crisis. Just misaligned in ways that don't show up on a balance sheet and that nobody can quite name in the boardroom or the family meeting. In this episode, Dan Deeble introduces the concept of the "lost ball" (something you own but no longer possess) and applies it to the leadership and family dynamics that drive governance risk inside complex family enterprises. The conversation covers how financial success masks misalignment, why the self-awareness gap is the most underestimated continuity risk for multi-generational wealth, and how moving from "nice" to honest communication can change the trajectory of family governance. For families navigating succession, rising-generation preparedness, and the structural costs of avoided conversations, this episode names what most financial planning frameworks never address, and offers a path for closing the gap. You can connect with Dan on LinkedIn or reach out to him directly at dan.deeble@lostballconsulting.com