¶ Intro / Opening
I think it's better to understand. The problem of inheritance as a second generation dilemma.
Hey everybody, welcome back to the family teams podcast. So I am going to start a conversation with my buddies, Chris and Riley. Chris and Riley, thanks for joining me today. Glad to be here. Thank you for having us. Yeah. Riley from the great state of South Carolina and Chris back in Eugene, Oregon. So there's a real confusion, I would say in general, in the, especially evangelical Christian world around the topic of, of inherit inheritance, right?
And I would say that there's at least a couple of places that comes from that. I think are really important to, to dive into, right? One is just the new Testament is teaching about money and the trap of wealth. And, and so do you really want to be giving that to your children? What does that create?
What, what are some reactions, you know, how have you wrestled with this topic? And I want to get into the details a little bit, because again, I think this is a really confusing topic and from a family team's perspective. This is a really important topic. Like, I don't want to think about this in a very shallow way.
Okay. Awesome. Imagine a world where instead of kicking our children out when they're 18, they come to work with us in our family business. And then when they get married, we give them a house so they don't have a mortgage. And a family business, so they don't have to find a job. And then we teach them an aspect of the family business.
I love, I love this. You know, I think we just we have to be. Thinking a lot more strategically about multi generational legacy, how to work as generations. So, yeah, I have lots of thoughts, but before I dive into this yeah, maybe we'll start with you, Chris, and then go to you, Riley. I'm really curious, like, you know, when you just hear that clip or hear this idea and he kind of teased out a few elements there.
Oh yeah. And and one of the things that Andrew said on there is he's like, he had this realization when they were telling him how many shares he had of this company. And he's like, Oh, that's, that's crazy. 250 million dollars right like so this 36 year old billionaire and he starts like I don't, I don't think he's a believer.
But, so that was one element of this is like, what, what is the extent that we should be. Supporting our Children in these regards. And I think it might've been you that taught me this, but thinking about Jewish families, like they, they actually, they'll fund a business and I think they can fail multiple times.
So you guys. You're gonna have to keep track of this and you're gonna have to pay that back And then you're gonna have to pay taxes and I was going through trying to teach them all these lessons And then we went over to my mother in law's house and she was like you guys should just come to grandma Grandma won't charge you interest on anything or any of that, you know, and she Had a totally different, like more generous approach to, I will get you guys off the ground and help you start this business.
So when you sort of snowplow parents, the future for your children. It creates a situation where they're suffering less. And so people that are, you know, of the impression, of course, and I think accurately, so character is really what matters, a huge responsibility. Then. How does this work when you give your kids an inheritance?
I think that that we can, we can, I think, make that case, but I think it's difficult case to make given the kinds of, the kind of world we live in. And so that's why I think we need to get into the details. Yeah. Riley, what did the strip for you? Yeah. It's fun. So I do have to also credit you for a lot of the, the mindset shifting that's happened in me around a lot of this topic over the years.
He created Adam and Eve. who are intended to be fruitful and multiply. And so when you start to think about it like that, then you start being forced to ask questions like what, what he was asking in that, in that reel is okay, well, you know, do I just want to leave my children out to dry? Do I want to make them have to go through the exact same thing that I went through?
I don't, I mean, I'm sure someone else smarter than me said it before. But as I have thought about trying to build an inheritance, it's like a constant motivator for me is that I need to work twice as hard. to build a spiritual inheritance for my children as I work to build a financial inheritance.
So the problem is that the first generation is oftentimes the one where through necessity, through hardship, you've accomplished a great deal of stability or success as a family. And now your children are growing up in a much more stable environment where they, they're not experiencing the kind of adversity that you experienced in, in, as a first generation, either believer or a first generation person who is really trying to build a very functional family.
And so like you just said, Riley, I think, I think actually the, when you're raising a second generation, the thing that really causes kids to push the limits is the expectations of the father you have to sort of raise the bar and a lot of fathers won't do it because they, again, all their intuitions are first generation intuitions.
You know, that always stirs up a lot of questions because people are really confused by, by that, that, that's a really second generation. Kind of, cause the people who almost all the people who follow stuff I'm writing are, are solid first gen or second gen. And, and almost all of their kids are growing up in a, in a place of stability.
Like this is, you know, my parents have sort of snowplowed all the, all the obstacles. That's a problem. The other thing that Myron brought up is that, you know, we're, we have this sort of reset, reset button mindset, right? Like every generation is supposed to reset. This is a, I think this is devastating for families to think that, that what's actually best for your kids is that they all need to experience you hitting the reset button every single generation.
And so I'm going to be here to help you. And, and a lot of that gets really intense at 22, like that's when they need to experience that. The problem is most, most of us don't have any kind of intuition around that because we're all. First gen in, in this sense, like first gen in that most of our parents said, okay, after 18, like, good luck, do your best, you know?
And you know, he's a, he's a pretty very conservative Catholic. And I think he comes from a background that is again, a more, a more ancient culture. And so he reacted a lot to this expectation that you wouldn't give anything to your children, kind of the Andrew Wilkinson statement. So let me play this for you guys.
Yeah. So, I'm not going to It's an important thing to teach kids. Most people don't. Right. Right. I mean, I'm not going to do it for you and you're not going to want me to do it for you. You got to figure out how to find out what's wanted and needed and where that intersects with your love and passion and what you can do.
That's good. But, but that can be taken to an extreme too. That is, I think, a consequence of liberalism. That, because, what is liberalism about? Liberalism is about the individual. It's about, forgetting about tradition, forgetting about legacy, doing what you want, being innovative, creative destruction, individual effort, individual everything.
And when you can, when you think that stability is going to last forever, you don't need your family. The government can provide a little safety nets for anybody, but we're all going to succeed anyway. No, one's going to starve. And so in that environment, everyone should, can, and ought to, this is the philosophy of liberalism.
And that is if we do create a lot of stability, does that mean that we should shift, The primary way that we think about life from sort of a family centric view to an individual centered view. And if that's true, it starts to make sense of this intuition. Don't give your kids anything, you're gonna somehow unduly influence their individual development.
I'm constantly getting just a, like, just a shower of confusion coming my way about what is a father for, like who, like explain fatherhood to me. It's just, it's all parenting. And again, I, you know, I've, we've had lots of episodes, we've talked about, we've all def we've defined Culturally we've defined.
That is a fatherly thing to do. It's very difficult for mothers to do that. I think fathers are actually built to do this, but we don't know it. We haven't trained fathers. They haven't seen this modeled. This is what Michael's describing here. How about, instead of saying, I've got to keep this wealth from you because you might squander it and, and thereby ruin your life.
It had just been there since like 1635 or something like that, and they made some additions to it. But it was, it was a visible expression of a family legacy without much money, without much fanfare. It was just there. And you can say, Oh, that's cool. That was my family. Oh, there's some history there. Head over to FamilyTeams. com and click Family Inc. to learn more, or to set up a strategy call with Jeremy to see if this might be a good fit for you.
It's like, I think if we can address the the family versus individual piece first and then identify, okay, as a team, what is our direction? What is our mission? What is it that we are about? And that becomes well formed in a child. Through their adolescent years, I think it becomes like a no brainer for them that, yeah, I'm a part of the father's business.
And so I may be in error in this, but I think at least at this particular moment, I would say the vast majority of children should want to be a part of their father's work, the to take over, to be a part of it, to continue it on, there's exceptions, and I think there's children gifted with, you know, certain skill sets and different things that they ought to be doing that is, that is slightly different.
We don't ask who. Is who a more basic question to ask than what and, and so I think for most people, the who is more important than the what, like, I don't really care. Like I've heard people say this a lot. I don't really care what I do. I care a lot about who I do it with. I mean, if I, if I, if I do that activity, if I joined that corporation, I'm going to spend the, you know, the bulk of my life with people that I really am not, I'm connected with that.
It's not necessarily associated with a single. And so I, I'm very big into, and family Inc, when we're coaching families, talking to them about this, like, Hey I want you to start a three businesses, start it, start a service based business, a scale business, and then start a legacy business and the legacy businesses oftentimes, you know, the, the different capital intensive assets, the investment thesis, what wealthy families call a family office you start to steward assets that, that, that isn't, yeah.
You know, I really prefer to do this over here. It's like, don't you, it's, it's an asset. Like our family stewards assets. None of us cares particularly about like none of us, none of us were what wake up every morning and say, I just love property management. You know, I can't wait for somebody to call me with their, you know, plumbing problems.
Like that, that, that is, that is the mantra of, of liberalism, according to what Michael Knowles is describing. Cause I, and I, and I think that's fundamentally flawed. And I love Neval and I agree with like 90 percent of what he says, but, but that, that one, I find completely off base. You know, we, we are not playing a single player game.
If we have family land, if we, if we have a strong family last night, we'll give a family crest. If, if there's a family trust fund that, that helps us go on vacations together or have a family summit every year, all of that identity, all the stories, all the pictures. All of that is, is really. grounding the individual into a family story.
And so I would say, yeah, don't give them anything, give it all away. You know, and, and so I, so I don't think this is a black and white answer. I think it depends on how you're raising your children. But if you're raising your kids to function as a team, if you're raising the bar as a father and casting a huge vision for your family, multi generationally, if you really believe what Genesis 1 28 says that the family is designed to be fruitful, multiply, fill, subdue, and rule, then who better to give that inheritance to than your children who have been raised to value those things.
And a lot of this, this, this baton passing I believe does happen in this, in this realm of time when your kids are in their twenties, like, I think that's such a critical timeframe for doing a lot of this work, because that's the time when many of our kids are beginning to, they really have an opportunity to just focus on like learning the most complex lessons of life.
And I trust you more than I trust anyone else. And so of course I'm going to give you that. And I'm going to be watching really carefully as like, how do you handle that? How do you handle that resource? How do you handle that resource? And so I've got my hand on the faucet and my goal and nothing would please me more than, you know, when I, when my kids turn 40, there's just, there's just nothing left that I feel that would damage them if I just turned the faucet all the way to 10 and say, please take everything and care for me and your mother.
Of raising their children up, you know in in a way that they have a spiritual inheritance that actually impacts them and their character in their life Yeah, please do not leave your children anything because it's going to make very powerful evil men and women so sure don't don't leave that but as I was kind of thinking through I was trying to structure my thoughts and for one I think inheritance, money in general is an accelerant it's it's not necessarily, you know, money is not inherently evil.
The Egyptian pharaoh, all the way through the bottom, you see what it looks like. And so, yeah, to that point I made earlier of like, working twice as hard to build the spiritual inheritance of your children. As you do to, to build their financial or asset inheritance the thing that I'm kind of taking it a little bit from, from your material as I've, I've watched you throughout the years, but definitely resonates with me is the idea that if you're a first generation in this endeavor, you, you have an, A huge task and a never ending task because for one, you have to figure out the jack and the beanstalk thing where you got to try to escape your situation.
and you refuse to give them one. And so they're going to search for it in the world and in their friends and so on and so forth. And so once you've escaped your poverty or your terrible situation, now you have to be the CEO, the leader of your family. And what does a CEO do? They cast a huge vision. They raise the bar and then they inspire and lead those who are falling.
Yeah. And so I think that's huge. Can I say one more thing about what you said, Riley? I just want to highlight that because I love the way you put that, that what's happening when, what you're preparing for, we just make it really concrete is that imagine when your oldest child turns 18, are you prepared to be CEO of the family?
That, that is a beautiful story that everyone, I think ought to want to live into that we're completely stealing from this next generation. Yeah. By suggesting that, no, what you really need to do is just become an individual and start all over again. And I think one of the elements that makes that really painful for this generation is that we're, you know, this generation is the first one that's going to have less resources than their parents.
That they're violating, that the very sort of basic generational pact that we make with each generation. And that is that, that we're going to try to set this up so that you, you go farther than we ever did. And I think the resentment and frustration that this generation is feeling because that pact is being so badly violated is palpable, but it's so important to get back to first principles, understand why that's getting violated.
And so we have to re we're just restoring something that's always been there. So yeah, that, man, that gets me stirred up. Thanks for sharing that Riley. Yeah. Do you guys have anything else you want to say? Yeah. Can, can I say, I have like one more little two point thing that I want to add on the end of that is for one is there's a book I read not too long ago called the treasure principle by Randy Alcorn.
But what they're really saying is I'm not, I can't. take care of any resources or any responsibility that the Lord gives me other than anything spiritual only, which it's, it's kind of a contradiction anyway. But you know, teaching yourself and then training your children to look at this, this stuff, this assets, houses, businesses, money.
And who better to steward the resources and assets of the world than those who trust in the Lord Jesus. That's right. Yes, the hitting that reset button, I think is killing us from from a larger community perspective, you see all these other communities that understand this, you know, Muslim communities are much better at this.
Inheritance is tied to that. You, I've told my kids before, I don't have the right to just give you these assets because they don't belong to me. I am stewarding the King's assets. And so as I'm going to do everything I can to train you to be a faithful steward of the King's assets, but, but I'm only going to be able to distribute resources to the extent that I believe.