James (Jay) E. Hughes, Jr. - Family Wealth: Keeping It in the Family The Business of Family

Mr. Hughes, a resident of Aspen, Colorado, is the author of Family Wealth: Keeping It in the Family, and of Family – The Compact Among Generations, both published by Bloomberg Press, and is the co–author with Susan Massenzio and Keith Whitaker of The Cycle of the Gift: Family Wealth and Wisdom, The Voice of the Rising Generation, and Complete Faith Wealth, all published by John Wiley & Sons and is a co-author with Hartley Goldstone and Keith Whitaker of Family Trusts: A Guide to Trustees, Beneficiaries, Advisors and Protectors".


In addition, he has written numerous articles on family governance and wealth preservation and a series of Reflections which can be found on his website jamesehughes.com.


He was the founder of a law partnership in New York City specializing in the representation of private clients throughout the world and is now retired from the active practice of law. Mr. Hughes was a partner of the law firms of Coudert Brothers and Jones Day.


Standout Quotes:



"The first asset a family owns is its spiritual capital; if it doesn't have it, it better develop it" - [Jay Hughes]
"If we're learning together and we're sharing what we learn, guess what? we're likely to make better joint decisions" - [Jay Hughes]
"A family that's nothing but quantitative capital is toast" - [Jay Hughes]
"You don't have entitled children and you will know how much is enough if you're concentrating on growing your qualitative capitals" - [Jay Hughes]
"The two great obstacles to adjustment for a human being are sex and money; money is the worst of all because no nice person will speak of it" - [Jay Hughes]
"Every family has ghosts" - [Jay Hughes]
"Almost always, the plan that they have for transition...is a liability" - [Jay Hughes]
"Way too much time I think is spent on saying we need to be resilient, that's good but the real question is we need to be enduring" - [Jay Hughes]
"There's no such thing as financial resources, there are only things that are the representation of someone else's dream; anybody who doesn't get that right just misses the problem of the recipient" - [Jay Hughes]
"It astonishes me, Mike, that many families with huge resources have never studied the fact that human beings don't learn the same way" - [Jay Hughes]
"You don't just start; you start by building up those cells are going to make up the team on the journey" - [Jay Hughes]
"Storytelling is incredibly important to discover our history" - [Jay Hughes]


Key Takeaways:



Jay's book "Family Wealth" was a huge inspiration over a decade ago for Mike's interest in the concept of Family Business.
After a major midlife crisis, Jay realized that his work in the law had a major flaw being that he was the only person who could use the structures he was creating for clients. He understood that the responsibility of a professional is to make clients more capable and liberate them but he had made them less capable. He started focusing more on ideas to make families more independent and also shared these ideas. Jay started to shift away from legal structures which were focused more on the 'How?' questions, and move towards the 'Why?' questions which had more impact on families. He also spoke publicly on different platforms about it and the message was well-received, encouraging him to start his book.
With the clients however this approach was challenging, but Jay understood that if he simply did what clients asked, it would not help them achieve their goals. He learned to wait for clients to gradually open up to the approach. It had also become needful for Jay to have a beginner's mind with this new approach, not assuming he had all the answers as usual but showing concern and the desire to help families.
Wealth comes from the Anglo-Saxon term "Weol" which means "well-being"; Financial capital is a form of wealth but it is not wealth. In trying to figure out the assets of a family to understand them better, a Balance Sheet has proved to be a humane tool.
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