Helping UHNW clients transfer true wealth

Feisal Alibhai of Qineticare

Jun 1, 2023

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1. Does big money equal big problems? What's your view?

2. What are the key ingredients of successful succession planning?

3. Why should any private wealth adviser care about this discussion?

4. What have been your take aways from the last ten years of your business?

Video transcript

1. Does big money equal big problems? What's your view?

Not necessarily, but yes, it does compound because of the numbers involved. At the end of the day, the basics are all the same, whether it's big money or small money. The key piece to it is family harmony and being able to remember life is in relationship. And what we're focusing on when it comes to big money is the money, the structure, and the planning, rather than the people for whom this is being taken care of. As such, I don't agree that big money equals big problems, but of course it can because there's a lot of impact that it has when things go sideways. I can give an example, if you want. For example, if you saw recently in the Middle East with the Al-Futtaim group, the actual ruler of the country became temporary CEO to take over until there was a resolution between the family members to be able to stabilize because of the impact it would have on not only the UAE but the Middle East. So yes, it can have, I wouldn't say big problems, it can be large impact and large implications if things go sideways. At the end of the day, the basics are all the same. We look at physical health, mental emotional health, and relational health. And in that, whether it's big money or medium money or small money, it all is the same, just compounded. The relationship with yourself, the relationship with your loved ones, the relationship with the family at large, the relationship with the community. But it begins with yourself, my mental state, my emotional state, my beliefs, my patterns, my drivers, and how they impact others as I show up, which is my state of being, and the implications of that. Therefore, I don't differentiate between large, medium, small, but the impact is clearly large, medium, small to the community and to the country, because these are big boys in the GDP of the countries they operate in.

2. What are the key ingredients of successful succession planning?

From our perspective, yes, the structure side is important. The governance, the constitution, those are key pieces that are kind of a checklist. But what's most important is that, are the families able to communicate, to relate, to attune with each other? Are they able to feel safe, to be able to be in truth? A lot of the governance, the constitution and those pieces are being done when family members are actually not speaking. They're actually holding back because they're concerned about things going sideways. The key for us is being able to have a truthful, open conversation that allows for people to be able to co-create a way of being, which is the governance, that is in alignment with themselves and the family at large. I mean on that, again, how does it begin? It begins by doing the inner work yourselves, because if I don't do the work on myself, I continue to project my own stuff. And so today, the way the model is done, not our model, but other models, is that we try to bring all these family members together and have them facilitate a conversation, but they haven't done the work. I'll give you an example. Michael, you show up and you eat clean, like you do today, you work out five times a week, you're doing your work, you're meditating, you're journaling, you're doing all the things to make sure that you're processing and clearing all the stuff. We call it spring cleaning. So, you're doing daily cleaning. I show up and I don't eat well, I don't sleep well, I don't work out, I don't journal, I have no coach, I have no support system. Now I show up, I'm half asleep, I can't be present, I can't be engaged. Having me participate in the conversation, even from a physical perspective or a mental impartial perspective, will be very challenging. So we're both showing up for the same objective, but in a complete different state of being. You're alert, you're engaged, you're present, you're ready, you're all out. And I'm like, "Yeah, okay Michael, I'm here because I have to be, I don't really want to be, but I happen to be your sibling, or happen to be your cousin." That's the first piece, ‘what is my physical state?’ Then it's the mental part. Do I have the support? Have I got rid of what I call my stuff? I'll give an example – imagine sitting with the family, and we're sitting with two spouses and I said, "How would you like to take a 40-foot container of your stuff and condense it into a backpack, just a basic backpack of the relevant things and get rid of all the noise?" And they looked at me and said, "What? That's possible?" And this is the thing we don't understand. Everybody thinks that we can't get rid of or let go of all the stuff that happened since childhood as a family. There are ways to do it. There's ways to forgive and love deeper and be more present and let go and let go and let go. I recently spent 11 weeks away, and the first seven weeks was about letting go deeper, loving deeper, and choosing love no matter what. Which I know sounds really hairy-fairy, but actually, you change, everything changes. And it's not just your family. It's the business, it's the families we serve. Everything changes. And it has. The first seven weeks was brutal, I'll be very honest. And the next four have been more, you can say, productive with the least amount of effort, because it's called allowing. You're allowing everything to just play out without forcing, without controlling, without a need to know what's going to happen next.

3. Why should any private wealth adviser care about this discussion?

Let's start with the Asian side. On the Asian side, the bankers and the banks are earning based on trading. We're not talking about the discretionary portfolio, we're talking about the active portfolios. Now, in order for an individual to be able to trade, they need to be mentally alert, physically well to be able to execute. Now, the average age of this wealth is on the upper side. It's in the 60s and 70s. Their physical health is actually very important in order for the banker or the bank to make money. Now, the second piece is that we're about to go through the largest transfer of generational wealth in the history of mankind. Then the next piece are the relationships. The relationships with the spouses and the next generation are more relevant than it's ever been. So the pieces we're talking about, which is the physical wellbeing and the relational wellbeing are extremely important to the banker, because otherwise, as we're seeing now, according to some reports, that more than 60% of widows are switching advisors and bankers. What does that already tell you? That the relationship, even with the spouse, hasn't been maintained. And this is only one generation, and now we're talking about the next gen. I was on a panel in Hong Kong, and funny enough, my own father, without talking to us, was consolidating the accounts to the bank that had the relationship with my mother and the next gen, without speaking to us and it was just happening. And all the bankers were in the room. All the banks that he was working with were in the room, and some were losing money without realizing why, because they never bothered to spend the time energy to get to know my mother and the rest of us.

4. What have been your take aways from the last ten years of your business?

The key takeaways that we have really, really been a reaffirmation of what we believed in and why we built the business was the importance of the mental and emotional health and the relational health in families. That the family is actually the core ingredient, not only to this space that we're talking about, which is the wealth space, but generally on a global scale. That if we're able to create harmony in families, we're not only able to shift a large family, but actually the community at large. And that's been actually the real takeaway on a bigger scale beyond the people we serve, which are obviously very large, impactful, successful families. So it's the harmony within it, bringing in the relational piece and the mental emotional piece, supported by the physical piece. That's been really a reaffirmation of what we believed and why we built this. And the other piece I would say is that finally families are willing to spend the time, energy, and resources on the family members themselves for whom this is all being done for, to create a support system as they journey life. Not on a reactive basis, but on a proactive basis. So when we started, there was a lot of what we call chronic acute cases where people were showing up because they're struggling. And now they're showing up in transition, which is, I'm about to become a parent, I'm about to become the CEO, I'm about to empty nest, I've just sold my company, what do I do next? And others saying, I want more harmony, I want more love, I want to focus on legacy. It's shifted from reactive to proactive. And that's really, for us, an incredible feeling and reaffirmation that finally we're moving towards where we dreamt.

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