Charles “Chip” Fisher is a principal at Ursus Advisory, where he focuses on peer-to-peer consultation for young adults with inherited wealth. He’s also the co-founder, chairman and CEO of Fisher Wallace Labs, a wearable brain-stimulation startup. Fisher spoke with Crain Currency about the intricacies of his approach.
Tell me about your journey and what led you to provide advice to those who have inherited wealth.
I started this last year, and I’ve been thinking about it for a long time. I come from a family where there’s both wealth and fame and didn't really have any direction. And I had a hard time talking about this with my friends who were from money. And they weren’t into having any kind of conversations about it. Maybe I wasn’t great about bringing it up.
I grew up in New York, and my father was in the electronics business; and we sold in 1969, and that triggered a big event. And for tax reasons, I came into a strong inheritance early — which is a good thing, as Martha Stewart would say. I’ve always looked at it as an uptown problem. Even in my worst moments, it’s great. But I think the pitfalls for individuals — especially today, with different social pressures and a lack of privacy — can be significant. I want to use the lessons that I and others have learned along the way to help those who have been given the gift of significant wealth at a young age.
What kind of approach do you have when consulting with these young people of inherited wealth?
The major point is to go after key psychosocial topics, which most inheritors are thinking about; they’re just not sure how to approach them. I give them structure, and I go after one of these subjects — which inevitably leads to other topics that deal with home, partner, friends, family, career. In general:
- How to understand and appreciate the origins of your family’s wealth and the unique challenges posed by its creation.
- Building genuine and honest relationships, both within and outside of your economic peer group.
- Managing the inevitable pressures of others seeking to influence you, often based upon assumed knowledge about your inherited wealth.
- How to understand your parents as people, defuse tensions and build a strong sense of self-worth, thereby creating your own emotional universe.
- Money and your personal identity: How to spiritually separate yourself from your money while using it for your own purposes.
- Learning to embrace the importance of staying engaged in the work you choose, no matter which field you pursue.
What makes your advice stand out from that of a career counselor or a therapist?
I think what's unique about what I do is that I've lived this, and I've thought about this intricately and witnessed it amongst my friends. I have a very different perspective from someone who's a classically trained analyst or work well in tandem with a psychiatrist or psychologist, of which I know many.
It sounds like there’s so much psychology involved — in a deeply analytical way — to finding out what makes you tick and the things you need to balance your life out beyond money and work.
No matter how much money you have, you really have to have a focus, whatever it is. And if you're not happy with it after giving it a good shot, you've got to move on to something else, but you have to move on. You can’t just say, "OK, I gave work a shot or whatever." You have to have a discipline and a direction. It's not existential necessarily, but you do have to have a deep sense of what you're good at and what your passions are. Otherwise, you're just not gonna put everything into it, because you're not in a position where you have to slug it out in a job that you don't like. So you better find something you really do like, because the temptation to walk away from it is much greater.
If you have inherited wealth, is it important to chart your own course instead of joining the family business or sitting on your money? To choose something independent, at least initially when you’re a young adult, to prove yourself?
It depends on your personality. If you feel you can negotiate within a family business, and you don't necessarily feel you need to prove yourself independently, then that is a good course of action. As long as you can buy into the plan, so to speak. In other words, you've gotta know it. There's an expression in fox hunting, which is, “Know your country” — where you have to know the obstacles ahead, where the swamps are, where the horses can go, that kind of thing. It's a metaphor. If you don't know your country, then you're screwed, because the whole day is a mess. And the same thing is true with being in a family business.
I have a client who’s Swiss who is interested in staying in the family business. But she’s dealing with trying to understand who the players are — because there are, like, four or five other family members — and where she stands. And I said, you've got to determine how far you can go before you either piss somebody off or step on their toes, because it's no different than being in a corporation. It just happens to be that these are family members. So it's not gonna be any worse or better if you're outside the family unless there's an understanding that you're the one who’s gonna take over.
But if you watch "Succession," you know that sometimes the patriarch will have his kids compete — kind of like General Motors, where they kept the company strong by having the divisions compete against one another. Rather than seeing the outsiders as competitors, they saw the insiders as competitors. And you have to be able to read the weather in your own family and in the company and figure out what you need to do to either position yourself to be happy or not or whom you can trust.