How to start measuring your Total Family Wealth

Chris Tanke (00:00)
In the business world, it’s been said you can’t manage what you can’t measure. This saying has been attributed to Peter Drucker, the famous efficiency expert for business. I’m sure many of you have read. And if you have a business at all, you understand that there’s a lot of truth to that, that it’s impossible to improve upon what you cannot see or you cannot recognize. Well, if that’s true of business, how much more true, I would say, would it be of your total family wealth?

How do we measure how we stand? How do we see what we might be doing? How do we understand and recognize our position as we try to build out our total family wealth framework? Well, we got a solution for you. It’s called the Essential Quiz. Stay tuned.

welcome back to Navigate in Abundance. I’m Chris Tenke, I’m joined by Conor Mackey. Today we’ve got some terrific news for you. After months and months of putting this together and designing a tool that we think is gonna be very effectual for you to measure.

and to assess where you stand in the building out of your total family wealth. We have created and are unveiling today what we call the essential quiz. And you can find this on our website. You can download it for free. can take it and you can do some self assessment. We’re excited about this because, you know, as we’ve said, our mission is to assist and encourage successful families.

to advance in their total family wealth pursuit. We want to be a resource for you so that you can accomplish all the opportunities you have in ledger wealth, legacy wealth and logistic wealth. We wanna prod you onto doing that and inspire you to do that. we’ve got a whiz bang website that has great resources on that. Of course, the podcast is award winning, right Connor?

Connor Maki (02:43)
Award winning. It’s blowing up.

Chris Tanke (02:44)
Award-winning

we just gave it we just gave ourselves our own award, but you know, that’s what we’re doing We’re talking about different topics to try to encourage you and to cast vision and to get you to move further Toward your total family wealth fulfillment But one of the things that that we didn’t have is any as tools are things that we could create for you to actually start using to interact with as a part for just listening to our Podcasts and our website

So we initially rolled out the essential file, which is on a previous podcast. You could also get this on our website live right now. We rolled that out, which is a comprehensive database file system as it were to make sure that you’re successfully accomplishing your ledger wealth, logistic wealth and legacy wealth. But

It is, what is it, like 28 or 30 pages. It’s significant.

Connor Maki (03:41)
Yeah, it’s

long. It’s long and it also begs the question of where do you start? And I think that that’s where the essential quiz comes into place.

Chris Tanke (03:46)
Exactly.

Right, and that’s how they play together. The essential file we think you will learn to really, really appreciate, but it’s not something you’re going to do in a weekend. The essential quiz you do accomplish in a weekend. And what that will do then is give you kind of a matrix on how you’re handling things, what opportunities you have, what concerns might be out there in the area of total family wealth. And then of course you can jump.

into all sorts of applications of what to do about it, including maybe even starting to look at the essential file more seriously. So these are tools that you can use that we think are robust. We’re not kidding around with this stuff. We want to make sure that it’s significant enough without overwhelming you to move you ahead to the next step of total family wealth development. as I’ve said, if we can just

Connor Maki (04:19)
That’s right. That’s right.

Chris Tanke (04:38)
Yeah, prod you along to trying something new in dealing with any of these deliverables, these tools. We’d have done our job. That’s, that’s fantastic. So that’s what they’re all about. We wanted to let you know that the essential quiz is out and you should start with this. As you look at your total family wealth through our version of that at navigating abundance, but

We want to kind of share with you what’s involved with this. So Connor, you’re the one that has taken the lion’s share of organizing the thoughts from this crazy old guy. And let’s talk about that a little bit more. What can somebody expect when they’re taking this?

Connor Maki (05:14)
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Well, first I’ll just say where this came from, where this was born from is, as you were saying, from the essential file. And when we first started to make the essential file, the idea was to have this distinct list of items that you should all have in place, certain personal details that if something were to happen to you, whether it be death or incapacitation, where is your family going to go and how do they access that information? And as we’re going through building the essential file, we found that

my goodness, this thing, as you said, is 28 or 30 pages long. So how do you know where to start? And it does. It does because we wanted to be comprehensive. That’s right. That’s right. And so how do you, how do you manage this as an individual or as the head of your family trying to figure out, okay, I think I have my assets all under control, but now my wills and trust, they’re out of date or they’re in places that nobody knows about. But now you’re just guessing.

Chris Tanke (05:50)
And it needs to be. It needs to be. But it’s a horrible place to start.

Connor Maki (06:11)
Right? So let’s actually put some meat on the bones and say, let’s get some data behind this and say that you scored really high in one category and scored really low in another. And so the way that this works with the essential quiz works is you’re going to go through and you’re going to take a questionnaire. And it is a longer questionnaire than most people are probably comfortable with. It is 98 questions. and it’s still not all comprehensive. It’s really just this broad overview. How do you feel about these categories? How do you feel?

about the future of your family when it relates to your ledger, logistic, and legacy wealth. And I think you’ll notice, and Chris, we’ve talked about this from the beginning, there’s a heavy emphasis on the legacy side of things. Because that to us is the most neglected and also the area where people have an idea of what they’re doing, but they haven’t actually written it down. And if you haven’t written it down, you don’t actually know what you’re supposed to be working on. So as you go through,

You’re take these questions. They’re all sliders, one through 10. Do you agree with the statement? Do you disagree with the statement? To what level do you agree or disagree? And then you go through, take the questions and it plops out this report, this lovely, however many pages report. It’s going to be different for most people. It is beautiful. I worked hard on this. So thank you, Chris. And the wording is fantastic. The wording is fantastic because Chris did a lot of the wording there.

Chris Tanke (07:25)
It’s beautiful. It’s beautiful.

You’re welcome, I mean it.

Ha ha

ha ha ha ha.

Connor Maki (07:39)
And what I love about this document is that it’s relatively simple. Now simple things can sometimes have the impression that they’re not good enough, but I think Chris, you would agree when we’re meeting with clients, oftentimes they really want the simple answers first, and then we can get into the complex details. All things that are simple usually turn complex pretty quickly. And so you’re going through this and you have an introduction. We can talk about that. It’ll tell you how to read your results, all that sort of information. But then really,

Chris Tanke (08:01)
you

Connor Maki (08:08)
and maybe we flash this on the screen. Maybe I will. It will give you some charts and some scores and you’ll start looking at the charts and the scores and you’ll see, wow, on this category, I scored a 90. Wow, I’m really, really good with my assets. I’m good at that area. But then when it comes to my family wellness, their spiritual, mental and physical health, I scored a 20. Maybe that’s an area that I should focus on and really put some effort into making sure that my family is cared for.

for their wellness as well, not just focusing on the assets. That’s really the power of this. And of course, it will also point out some things to consider, some things that we noticed, some things that you did really well, but also some things that these are the areas you should start with. And then you can go back to the essential file, start looking at those areas, understanding what it is that you can work on right here, right now to make those areas a higher score. That’s how this tool works in conjunction.

Chris Tanke (08:49)
Okay.

Yeah, yeah, that that

that is that’s essentially the, you know, the walk around the block and how it works for sure. Let’s let’s put up the total family wealth illustration that we frequently use. We’re going to put that up on the screen right now. And again, there’s your four years, four years, there’s your three areas of of wealth, your logistic wealth, your ledger wealth, your legacy wealth.

Connor Maki (09:12)
Yeah.

Chris Tanke (09:31)
Your ledger wealth is your financial capital, very valuable. Your logistic wealth is your functional capital and you can see these are subcategories underneath that as well. And your legacy wealth is your family capital, the most valuable of all your assets. And there are subcategories under there. So as you’re taking the test, each of these subcategories also are going to be

So under family ethos, under your legacy wealth, you might score a 20. It’s like your family spirit isn’t so good. You know, we’ve got to build this up. Maybe here’s some simple suggestions or whatever. You need to start maybe focusing on this. And by the way, you’ll know that anyway, probably before you take quiz, right? I mean, I would think if you’re all self-aware. But maybe down to philanthropy,

Connor Maki (10:15)
Right. Right.

Chris Tanke (10:21)
you’re a family philanthropy, you’re in the 80 percentile, that’s really, really good. But you’ll be able to juxtapose those and see that under that category, how am I doing here and here, and all that will be placed in a bar chart for you to view.

Connor Maki (10:34)
That’s right. That’s

right. And I think, Chris, if we can get into the philosophy behind some of this as well, you know, we we work with business owners and what we see pretty often is business owners, they’re really good at making money. I mean, really good at making money. They understand their business. We’ve said before, their business is like another child to them. But in the meantime, they think that they’re being really good with their children at home. And then you get some of these statements in front of them and they start wondering.

Chris Tanke (10:55)
Mm-hmm.

Connor Maki (11:02)
Am I really present when I’m with my family? So maybe that’s an area you want to work on or maybe it’s the reverse, right? You’re a second generation and you’re really focused on your family because you wanted that as a child, but now you’re struggling with the business side of things. How do you manage a business in a way where it becomes your own and it’s no longer mom and dad’s as it was before? So that’s the uniqueness of this is it’s going to point out all these different qualities for all sorts of different people.

It’s not going to be a everybody gets the same report. It’s going to really change the way that you view your own business, your own family, your own logistics. It’s really going to dive into just you. I think that’s incredible.

Chris Tanke (11:46)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, and again the goal is not to be comprehensive but it’s because it can’t be Connor you joked about 98 questions being a lot 980 questions wouldn’t be enough if you want to be comprehensive So the goal is not to be comprehensive. The goal is to be self-reflective So what if you can take this quiz again and come out with one two three things that saying, you know I need to start focusing that start thinking about that some more it has done its job it really has so

Connor Maki (11:53)
Right.

Yeah.

Right, right.

Yep, absolutely.

That’s right. That’s

right.

Chris Tanke (12:16)
To us, we don’t want to overcomplicate things. But again, we want to be robust enough to where it’s valuable. It’s not bubble gum and butterflies, but it’s a valuable thing. But at the same time, we want to encourage you to move. And you can easily be overwhelmed by too much of information. So the essential quiz is a less is more kind of approach. And I think that you all will appreciate that.

as you go through it.

So once you take this quiz, again, if you want to reach out to us and say, hey, can you help me interpret some of these results, or I wondered about this or that or the other thing, we are here for you. I think as you go through the quiz, I think we actually give you an invitation at the end. if you want to call and talk about this, we’ll give you a free hour of our time. That’s not a problem. We meet great people this way.

We just want to be an encouragement to you. That’s it. There’s no obligation. There’s no trick. Um, we are, we are actually just trying to be an encouragement to you and we’re looking for feedback too. As a matter of fact, right. We’re headed off, uh, next week and this will date this, if you’re watching this, uh, in 2033, but we’re heading next week to the purposeful planning Institute, which is, uh, their annual rendezvous in Boulder, Colorado, which is a group of, I don’t know, 300 or so.

practitioners in what we would call the total family wealth space slash family office space. We are rolling this out there, not as a presenter, but as a vendor, as it were, as we’re there also to learn and go through presentations. But we’re rolling out both the essential file, the essential quiz, and the podcast to get feedback on what we’re trying to say, how we’re trying to frame

The total family wealth concept how we’re preaching the sermon and how we can be more effectual and what better place to do that Than have people that are already involved in that industry. Although they’re all siloing what they’re doing We’re trying to take a big picture of it all but we’re really looking forward to their feedback So we are serious about feedback and we’re serious about yours So again, please reach out to us. Let us know what you think

or if you want any clarification or any encouragement or any things you might want to try to do, we’ve been more than willing to do that if you can or to explain more about navigating abundance and what we’re all about. So that’s our philosophy. just we want to give first. We want to add value first.

Connor Maki (14:45)
Absolutely.

Yeah, absolutely. And I would say also, if you’ve enjoyed our content, you’ve enjoyed this, even this episode, like, subscribe, comment, all those sorts of things. But as you mentioned, going to the Purposeful Planning Institute rendezvous this year, one thing that we’ve talked about pretty often in the office is we say we’re preaching the gospel of total family wealth. And there are a lot of folks that are going to be at this conference that do just that in their own language, in their own way.

And oftentimes what we see is they are in their own lane of total family wealth, whether it be they’re on the logistics side of things, they write wills and trusts, they’re part of your asset management team, or whether they’re some sort of guru who’s speaking to you about how to help your family wellness or work on the legacy side of things. I think what’s unique about what we’re trying to do here at Navigating in Abundance and unique about the essential quiz and the essential file

is that we’re trying to combine all three of them in a way that we like to use the language, or you do Chris, of we’re trying to democratize the family office concepts. And this is just one of the ways to say, hey, here’s this free resource. Go ahead, try it out, download the file. And then if you find value in that, or you find that this is work that you need to be doing, then that’s when you can reach out. I think there’s an incredible value there for both listeners and

Chris Tanke (15:52)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Connor Maki (16:12)
people who just stumble across these resources.

Chris Tanke (16:16)
Yeah, and that is democratizing it or mainstreaming family office concepts, or I would say, keep it in our language, which communicates better totally family wealth concepts. You know, again, if you have significant means, you might have resources that are helping you already in this area. Or you might have significant means and you’re really not pursuing this at all. So to us, our mission is whether you have a million dollars

Connor Maki (16:25)
Yeah, yeah, right, right.

Chris Tanke (16:43)
or a billion dollars. What we’re talking about, the sermon we’re preaching is something you need to hear. It’s truth is truth for everybody. And, you know, it’s important to assess every family to assess how am I doing my ledger wealth, logistic wealth, and legacy wealth? And what is my plan? How can I improve? Am I balanced? Am I really, really out of balance or whatever? You know, what does it say before? I can’t remember who said it, but it’s true.

Connor Maki (16:50)
That’s right. That’s right.

Chris Tanke (17:11)
A problem well-defined is a problem half-solved already. Vision. You cannot manage what you can’t measure. You can’t improve what you can’t see or recognize. That’s a lot of what we’re doing. You don’t need a PhD to understand it or produce it. We’re just here to preach the sermon and to encourage it. And again, if people respond in a positive way,

Connor Maki (17:15)
Yeah, yeah.

That’s right.

That’s right.

Chris Tanke (17:34)
That’s fabulous to us. We’re fulfilling our mission. So the essential quiz is where you begin. We encourage you to take it and ponder the results. If you want to give us any feedback or talk further about your results, we’d love to do that. And then the essential file would be the next thing for you to then consider starting. That’s available for you too, but we recommend highly you start with the quiz, right, before you go to the.

Connor Maki (17:57)
That’s right. That’s right. I would start with the quiz. It’s an easier step into things. I want to say one last thing, if I may, Chris. What I find interesting, so a lot of us have taken those personality tests, right? You’ve taken them before, Chris? Where you find out you are this type of person and it’s all based on numbers that you put into a computer. Part of me in the past,

Chris Tanke (18:13)
Mm-hmm. Yes.

Connor Maki (18:23)
has really struggled with that idea of taking a personality test because I often think, how can I take a personality test if I don’t know myself already? And I think that a lot of people don’t actually know themselves. But I’ve come to understand personality tests and even the essential quiz, as you’ve already said, and we’ve kind of pushed a little bit here, it’s a start. It doesn’t fully define you right then and there. It just gives you an idea of where

Chris Tanke (18:33)
Right.

Connor Maki (18:51)
you are right now with your total family wealth. And it’s the same thing with personality tests. So 98 questions, yeah, it’s not enough because these are conversations that will take months in probably years to actually work through. But it’s at least a starting point. And I think a lot of people realize they’re at a point in their own lives where they need to start. They need to start working on this stuff.

Chris Tanke (19:14)
Yeah, and that’s well said. And along with the spirit of that, I think we’ve even said in some of the instructions on reading the results, you may or may not agree with what the results were. You might say, hey, that’s not right. Well, good. You’re interacting with the concept. Go ahead and stand up for yourself. That’s awesome. But at least you’re talking about it thinking about it. That’s what we want. That’s what we want.

Connor Maki (19:24)
Right?

Yeah.

That’s right, I’ve

taken many a personality test for school and work and different jobs and almost every single time I say, that’s not me. But then I start to find out maybe it’s starting to help me identify and define myself. It can be very helpful and this is a way to start down that.

Chris Tanke (19:55)
certainly. So it’s called the essential quiz. That and along with the essential file, our podcasts, our website, the things we’re producing, it is gratis to you take advantage of that. And if you want to a little further deep dive in a conversation with us, again, we’d be pleased to meet you if we really would. So for Chris Tenke, this is and Connor Mackey, we’re going to sign off from navigating abundance, reminding you once again, right?

Your family is worth it.

Strategic Financial Group (20:28)
Thank you for joining us for today’s episode of Navigating Abundance. If you found this information useful or helpful in any way, let us know in the comment section below. If you’d like to see more content like this and follow our podcast, you can find us on all major podcast platforms. If you’re interested in working with today’s guests, you can find their information in the description of this podcast. If you’d like to know more about Navigating Abundance and how we may help you or find more resources related to what we do, you can find those at navigatingabundance.com.