As chief learning officer at the Denver-based Johnson Financial Group, Kristin Keffeler works with families, next-generation members of family offices and advisers on motivation, behavioral change, family dynamics, governance, education, development and intergenerational collaboration. Kristin is the author of The Myth of the Silver Spoon: Navigating Family Wealth & Creating an Impactful Life and co-wrote Wealth 3.0: The Future of Family Wealth Advising in 2023.
How did you begin to work with family offices?
My father is a wealth creator. He founded a company, took it public and sold it when I was going to college. I spent a lot of time with estate-planning attorneys, financial advisers and tax people. I showed up meeting after meeting waiting to learn what this all meant to me. Instead, I walked away after every meeting feeling not that intelligent.
I was working in health and productivity management in Fortune 500 companies. At the same time, I thought a lot about what it means to be a good steward. I was trying to find my own voice in our family and how to integrate family wealth into my narrative while living my own life. That led me to work with other rising-gen family members to help them build business, life, beneficiary and financial skills to have a seat at the family decision-making table and also be in the driver's seat of their own lives.
What are the biggest challenges you’ve identified for second-, third- and fourth-gen family members?
My own experience mirrors that of many other second gens, which is different from third, fourth and fifth gen. My Dad was successful, but he didn't have wealth events until I was a young adult. I left home when this was happening, so I didn't grow up with wealth.
That's not atypical for people who are second gen. Their parents are in building mode when raising kids, and the wealth event comes later. Fundamentally, there’s a core set of skills needed to adapt and be effective in the family: How to budget, how to live within a budget and how to make decisions. Before those skills can be built, there has to be the inner work of learning to be an individual, forming an identity separate from the family and being a part of something that often feels bigger than yourself.
How well is this work addressed by family office advisers?
It’s often outside the lanes of most family office professionals. I worked with a young woman whose parents created a company worth more than a billion dollars. She was the sole heiress but lacked the ability to make decisions about her own life — what apartment to rent and what car to drive. Her parents kept very tight purse strings. We worked on building her skills to figure out what it cost to live and create a budget. As long as her parents made those decisions for her, she would remain a child. Some of these are tangible skills, and others relate to family dynamics.
What inspired you to begin writing books about wealth and families?
I got my master's in applied positive psychology and researched family office members who were at the top of their game to understand common character traits and skills to apply a strength-based approach. The book is a framework that can be more broadly used.
Your book talks about the hidden tripwires of inherited wealth and the clutter that family money can bring. Can you give me an example?
Identity experience is fundamental for healthy development, regardless of wealth. It’s the ability to build your own identity, understand yourself as an individual separate from your family of origin but also connected to your family of origin. Wealth creates a compounding factor that can stunt the process, because usually with money comes power. Over-identification with the family makes it nearly impossible to have the courage to try something outside the family business or even succeed inside a family business.
The sweet spot is the ability to know who you are. You can be present and engage, -but not lose the core of your identity. The book deals with this kind of psychological and emotional clutter that wealth can create.