Great Houses

Gregory Treat: All right, everybody.

Thank you so much and welcome to episode seven of The Great Houses Forum.

I'm Gregory Retreat.

I'm an estate planning attorney and a consultant for business owning families that are attempting to make the leap to being multi-generational business owning families, which is a, a very counter-cultural leap.

There's a lot of, there's a lot of good things that happen when you, when you go down that road, but it is not something that happens by accident.

There's a, uh, a pastor in, uh, in town, in the town where I live that I, that I love that basically says you can either, you know, go, go by default or you can go by design and, uh, having a.

Multi-generational family.

Having a great house is definitely not something that happens by default in our, in our modern culture.

And it probably never happened by default, even, uh, even when the, the, the entirety of society and, and social order was aimed at helping people build these great covenantal engines that, uh, that we call great houses.

And the Great House I define as a family that owns its own business, controls its own property, and, and has such a, uh, there's such a benefit for being associated with this family.

That people that, that are outside want to join, want to come under and serve them because it's actually a, a boost in their status.

And that gives them, that tends to give them political relevance in their society.

Um, I believe that one of the great.

Troubles that we're going through right now is that great houses are that, that vehicle that, uh, that Western society, uh, has Western civilization, we might say,
has used to create stability, economic stability, political stability, social stability, and that we have done a bunch of things, uh, that tear down the great houses.

And as a result of that, we are facing some challenges in our, in our world today.

So today we're gonna talk about taking care of your brother.

So.

We've been going through kind of an initial series, and this will, this will likely be the last time that I, I say that we're, we're doing joining the Covenantal Economy, and so I've kind of laid out the basics.

I might do one more, depends on how much material we're able to cover today, how fast I can get it through.

And, uh, and I'm, I'm always attempting to not go too fast.

I'm attempting to, to present it in a way that people find intelligible and, and that they can focus on.

Um, so we, we might do one more episode of joining the Covenantal Economy, but, uh, that's, that's, that's what we've been doing in these initial episodes of the, of the podcast.

So, uh.

We talk about seeing the covenantal economy, you gotta be able to see the covenantal economy.

If you can't notice when people are interacting according to this different set of rules, then really nothing else matters if you can't see it.

So we spent two episodes on that.

And then, uh, then you gotta learn how to signal the covenantal economy.

Signaling is, is the mechanism by which you kind of put yourself out there and say, Hey.

I, I know what you're doing.

Here's the value that I could add.

It's sort of an implied, uh, high context way of negotiating, uh, in, in context where it's, it's not always helpful for you to be the person that comes out and says, I, and actually says the words.

I see what you're doing.

Here's what you're doing.

I'd like to play this game with you.

Um, and then finally, we've been talking for the last couple of weeks.

This'll be the third week that we're talking about it.

Uh, how to satisfy the covenantal economy.

How, how to actually have the structures so that when people look at you, they have some confidence.

They have a reasonable confidence that you're gonna be able to meet your, your duties, that you're gonna be able to be a player long term, um, which basically means being able to disciple internally and have people that will represent your interests long term.

Last week we talked a lot about the concept of elders, which I believe is a critical and missing piece of this, especially elders at the family level.

It's great to have elders in, in, in contexts like the church or in kind of these broader social contexts, these decentralized contexts that, that we've been playing with for the, especially for the past 400 years in the west.

Uh, but you really do need, as a goal of what you're trying to build, if you're gonna build a great house, you need the capacity to raise up elders inside of your structure.

They're gonna disciple people without them having to leave your house.

If you have to send somebody off to university, if you have to send somebody off to, you know, be mentored by a pastor far away.

I'm not saying that's bad.

I'm not even saying it's necessarily sinful, but it is a point of dependence.

And, uh, you know, in these, in these troubled times, any points of dependence are also known as vectors of attack.

And so we just kind of gotta be honest with ourselves about if we can't produce elders, how stable is the world that we're building and how reliable are the promises that we're making?

Okay.

So this week, as I said, again, we're gonna be talking.

So last week we talked about the elder relationship, which is kind of a vertical relationship between elders and heirs.

And this week we're gonna be talking about more kinda the horizontal relationships.

How do you take care of your brothers?

What does that mean?

So I'm gonna start with a question and, and, and it's an odd question, um, but I, I'm doing that kind of on purpose, um, not kind of on purpose.

I'm definitely doing it on purpose.

I thought a lot about this question over the past week.

Um, so the question is, what is your family?

Is it a social construct?

Is it a voluntary agreement?

You know, I'm just gonna hit the, you know, the sters.

Do you think everything's a social construct?

Libertarians think everything's a voluntary agreement, or should be, is it an entity, right?

Is it, is it a corporate structure?

Is it nonprofit?

Is it for profit?

Um, and then I guess the, the, the, the kinda the preliminary question that I would ask, um, is, is your family real?

Do, do you, is, is your family some kind of emergent thing?

Is it something that, that, that you create or does your family exist outside of the social construct and the, the voluntary agreements and whatever entity structures that you make?

And I'm, I'm a transactional attorney, estate planning attorney and trust attorney.

And so I work a lot with structures.

I work a lot with people giving legal instantiation, having legal vehicles by which they can allow their families to do stuff in our modern, you know, financialized world.

And the question, you know, this is a very important question for me because, um, I want my clients to understand that, that the answer is your family is real.

And that means this is not a process of creation.

This is more like a process of discovery.

Your family already exists.

If you, if you exist, you got a wife, you got kids, you got extended relatives, your family exists.

And the question is, uh, how closely can we get the modern legal structures to line up with the actual, may call it spiritual, we might call it philosophical, but the actual underlying reality that, that, that your family consists of.

Okay.

And that's, that's, that's an important thing to, to think about.

If you've never thought about that, I encourage you to think about that.

Um, and, and this is because the, the household, the, the, the, the older word, uh, for family wa wasn't just lineage again, it was some, some level of including property and including the people that worked for you.

'cause every family included a small business.

Uh, in the ancient world.

The, the household, the family, its lands and its retainers was the central institution of society.

Alright?

Uh, when, when, you know, Aristotle writes his politics and he's describing, he's thinking about the, uh, the structures of society's thinking about political structures.

He starts as all Greeks would start, uh, for the next, you know, basically a thousand years with the household.

Right.

With the relationship between, between, uh, fathers and children, husbands and wives, masters and servants, these are the, the, the, the core relationships of the core institution of the ancient West.

And there's a, there's a wonderful book, if you're not familiar with it, called, uh, the Ancient City by a wonderful gifted gentleman, uh, named Kangas, uh, where he talks about the, the culture, the pre-Christian culture of Greco-Roman society in particular.

And he spends, I think the first, like 40% of the book is almost entirely about the household 'cause it's such a critical.

Uh, institution and literally all of the other institutions are built on top of it.

Um, you know, one of the, one of the fun things about, about the ancient cities is the ancient cities did not actually keep lists of citizens.

They kept lists of households.

Um, and those households had lists of their citizens.

Uh, but that, that's a, that's a critical distinction that people, people miss, which is that, you know, if you got kicked out of your household to a certain extent, and there there's gradations of being kicked out of your household.

But if you were kicked out of your household in an ultimate final sense, if you were, if your name was stricken from the, the book of lives of your family.

Uh, then you lost your citizenship, uh, frequently cer certainly your ability to qualify for public office, your ability to wield any
political power in your society that was taken away from you if your household no longer said, oh, he's a, a, a member in good standing of us.

And this is, you know, particularly relevant to those of us who, uh, who love and appreciate the Christian story because the Christian story, uh, that happened pretty frequently.

People, one, one of the, one of the things that almost necessitated you being kicked out of your household, uh, was a denial of the, the, the household gods.

Right?

Uh, and so if you were no longer willing to bow and worship the, at the household shrine, then, you know, if, if, if your, if your pat familias, if your head of household was a true believer in the ancient Greco-Roman religion,
which most of them weren't by the time of the first century, but if they were, they, they would've been obligated under the old laws to, to kick you out and then to try to get, you know, make you, make you leave the city.

Yeah.

And so, but to just give you, you know, I'll tell one more story about just how central, uh, that the household was.

Uh, and I'm quoting from Luke Luca, two verse one.

Now, in those days, a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that a census be taken of all the inhabited earth, okay?

The inhabited Earth.

And, and, and that's an interesting term there, because of course the Roman Empire was not taking a census of literally every human being on earth.

So we know, we know there's a little bit of, of, uh, uh, you know, fictive language.

There's some, there's some, uh, figurative thing going on there.

So the word that's being translated, inhabited earth, there is oin, which is literally the world of people who are householded, okay?

Uh, but colloquially it was the civilized world, which is to say the Roman Empire.

And, and by implication.

The, the, the, the world, the people that were outside of the omen, um, the people that were outside of, of the householded world were barbarians.

So if you were organized in households, if you honored your father and your grandfather and your ancestors, and you had a central family shrine, which was the, the, again, the basis of the Greek concept of, of private property.

Actually, I don't know if that's, again, I don't think I've said that to you guys yet, but, uh, it was the foundation of the Greek concept of private property.

Um, if you had that, then you were part of the inhabited world.

The civilized world, and Rome, in its opinion had conquered you.

Okay.

Um, you know, there's these, these famous series of speeches that, that Augustus gives.

Uh, after he, you know, he, Julius Caesar goes north, he conquers half of Britain, uh, Augustus, you know, has, has his, uh, his military adventures in, uh, in, uh, with the German tribes and in the face of certain military setbacks.

And then Hadrian would do us the same thing.

Uh, in, uh, century later they come back to the Senate, the Roman Senate, and they give these speeches and they talk about the concept of the, the, the Roman term was Orbi, raum, the, the Latin term.

Uh, but it, but Orbi, Tarara and Kuman were, were cognate words.

They were, they were legally the same when you, when you look at translations of these, of these ancient works.

Um, and so they, they set Augustus sets the limits of the Roman Empire.

Um, and then, and.

Basically says, we don't wanna go any further, any north, right?

The, and, and by the way, this is like the most famous, these grapes were sour anyway, right?

We don't wanna conquer any further north.

These people, they worship their horses.

They don't, um, they, they, they don't have, like, they, they have some of our similar gods, but they don't organize themselves in households.

They're not urban.

They, they don't build the way we build.

And as a result of that, they don't have the wealth to make themselves worth conquering.

So if we go and conquer un householded people, barbaric people, which again, people that are not organized in households that allow them to accumulate wealth.

'cause the Romans really believed that the household was what allowed you to accumulate wealth.

If we go conquer those people, we are gonna spend money and we'll have nothing to show for it at the end of this.

Right.

Um.

And there's a, there's a, a, a, a Greek gentleman named Strava who writes Strava's Geography.

And he, he notes that Rome occupied the greatest and best portion of the Oman Inn, which is, which is greatest and best is a reference to Jupiter greatest and best, uh, the, the, the titular God of the Roman Empire.

So, so this was a super central concept in the ancient world.

It literally defined were you civilized and wealthy, or were you barbaric and poor?

Right?

And, and, and this, this institution was the, the foundational basis for their understanding of themselves as the civilized world in, in, in the first century.

So, and just to kind of give you some idea of what we mean, like when we're talking about a household, a household, uh, is at a minimum a legal person separate from its members.

It's something that, that, that it can engage, it can acquire property, it can have debts, um, and, and, and those, those debts, um, liabilities are separate from the members.

Uh, another way to think about this is it's, it's almost like a natural corporation.

There, there's some degree of limited liability.

Um, you know, and when you study the history of corporations, you study the history of limited liability.

There was actually a very effective.

A form of limited liability that was granted to people, um, in, in the medieval period, uh, where if you, if your father started a business
and he left instructions for you on how to continue his business in his will and his estate, and you continued to run his business.

On his behalf, right after he was done and you were following his instructions, you, you could, you didn't have to close the estate out, right?

'cause you only had to close the estate if you needed to do something that your father told you not to do or, or to step outside of his, his bonds.

And so your, your father dying.

And by the way, this still works today.

No one does it because it's legally cumbersome and totally unnecessary.

But you could still, I know any person who died who said, Hey, I want my estate to operate in this way.

You would, your, your, your heirs, your kids would not have, there would be distinct persons and there would be a separation of liabilities between
the estate that owned the businesses and the kids that worked for the businesses, even if those kids made most of the decisions or all the decisions.

Okay.

So a household, you know, is a legal person separate from its members.

It's kind, it is.

It probably has some kind of natural corporation.

The Greek version of this was once you set up an ancestral shrine, which probably meant you'd lived in the area for two or three generations.

Um, again, this is, this is.

Not explicitly related, but it's practically related to that, that concept of eldership and citizenship from, uh, that we talked about last time.

Uh, you know, if you, if you hang around for two or three generations, your grandson gets admitted into a, uh, a fray tree, a fraternity, um, then you're an elder.

You, you have certain priestly rights, you have certain ritual obligations and, and responsibilities.

But that also comes with, with, with a bunch of a bunch of rights.

And, and that allows you to have a chunk of land.

And there was a specific amount of space within this territory of your family shrine, and it was a big deal.

Religiously.

And again, when, when the Greeks believed in, in the, the pre-Christian religion, the Greco-Roman religion, it was a big deal for that, that property to, to be transferred.

It was not a thing that was, that was done lightly.

Um, if you, and, and especially kind of, you know, in the, in the story of there were many stories like this.

You have very attractive piece of real estate.

Some local power person wants that, that that land.

Uh, the Greeks really did believe that, that, that you would create hungry ghosts to use, that's a Chinese term, but you, you would create ghosts that were suffering in some way and they would attempt to take vengeance on you for stealing their family's land.

And that was a big deal.

Okay.

So the household was this central thing.

It had, it had legal instantiation.

It was legally honored.

It was legally recognized.

One of the.

One of the things that I talk about in, in my, uh, consulting practice is, you know, in, in, in most cultures through most times, a lot of this stuff was fairly customary.

If you did the actions, if you behaved like a household, if you raised your son and raised your grandson to do the right kinds of things, then you would just kind of automatically be accorded this status by doing those things.

You own property, you raise your kids, you raise your grandkids, and, and, and they, they marry, they have legitimate wives, they have legitimate heirs, and everybody's playing the game.

You would just, well, of course that guy gets those rights.

He's, he's been around.

Whereas, you know, in, in the United States especially, um, after, uh, a process that was called codification in the United States, which is a much nicer
term, codification, a much nicer term than the death of the common law, which is another thing that you could call it if you, if you were so inclined.

Um.

And the overturning of a huge number of common law rights.

We sort of inverted the roles of the judge and jury there in that whole same time period.

Lots of fascinating things happen.

And that's the term, that's the timeframe where we get the famous concept of get it in writing, right?

Uh, you can't do oral agreements, you can't do handshake agreements.

You gotta get it in writing.

Um, and, and as that takes place, the same thing becomes true of like, all customary law basically goes away in about a 20 year period in the United States.

Um, some people extend that to 40 years, but, but certainly 1880 to 1920.

In 1880, the common, the, the common law, the customary laws.

Are the dominant way that law is practiced in the United States by 1920.

The common law is effectively a non-starter, except in certain kind of arcane, um, you know, there's tort concepts and all this stuff, but, but almost everything has been codified.

And the, and the states have sat down and, and wrote, you know, Napoleonic style legislative codes.

Most of them not as good as Napoleon's code, but, but they, they've attempted to write out and strictly define all of these things in a legal code.

And, and we've moved away from customary law.

And that's the same time period in which you start seeing and start needing, legally speaking, the, the, the famous trusts that we're
all familiar with from, you know, the Vanderbilt and the Rockefellers and some of these other, other, other players at the time.

Okay.

So all of that, the household, super important.

One of the things that, that, and, and, and we're, I'm not gonna attempt to convince you of this today, we're gonna spend.

I'm sure weeks and weeks talking about this.

Um, most people tell me that, that there, there's this moment where it all clicks together and they kind of access this idea of, wow, the household is real.

My family is real.

Like it's, it, it exists objectively out, uh, and apart from what I believe or what I do.

Um, but that was the norm up until, you know, basically a hundred years ago.

And then we started really, really focusing on the individual.

We, there's a lot of stuff with, uh, uh, Sigmund Freud and the, and, and the way that we kind of moved through, uh, things in, in that time period, we really moved away from, from the concept of the household, we changed how the laws worked.

You know, adulthood reaching a majority became a much bigger deal.

Um, and, and, and so we focused on the individual.

Okay.

And what I wanna tell you about the individual, there's a lot of great things about the individual freedom and all this stuff.

Um, we don't, in the modern world, we don't operate as, as households, we operate as individuals and individuals, individual investors get individual returns, okay?

Building wealth in particular is really, really hard as an individual.

Remember, I talked about the idea that the household had, had the, the right to have assets and liabilities separate from any of the individual members.

What did that mean?

That meant that you could go take risks because the household would element your wife and children.

It would take care of your family.

It might even be able with, you know, an appropriate time.

It might even be able to recapitalize you, right?

It might even be able to, to, to bring you back and, and allow you to, to restart the game.

In fact, that that was one of the primary things that a household would do.

Okay?

So again.

When, when we think about life, we tend to assume some kind of structure like this.

You have a a, a A column and I'm gonna say this is the red column, right?

Because this is consists of liabilities and in this column we have things like your suburban house.

Your job or business, your cars, CLO computers and close your investments, your traditional estate planning structures, your mortgage, your student loan, your credit cards, everything that you own and that you have the right to control, right?

This is the a hundred percent personal ownership.

Um, and you have the right to control it.

With control comes liabilities.

Liabilities attached to that.

Okay?

So everything in, in your red column, this is your individual identity.

Um, it's taxed at maximum rates.

It's subject to lenders and lawsuits.

It's subject to the bankruptcy and divorce court, right?

And, and that means that if, if you go bankruptcy, if you get divorced, then all of that stuff gets exposed.

It becomes super public.

It gets divided up by, uh, you know, judges and, and legal systems that may not have the same values.

You know, in these troubled times.

Many, many of us live in, in, in places.

Um, where the value system that, that you're devoted to, which is very much being contested, is not shared by the lawyers and the judges that will decide your case.

And then obviously it, it, it gets divided at death.

Uh, there's a, there's a government share, um, for, for a lot of families.

And, and now the, the big beautiful bill has, uh, extended that so that most families are, are if, if you have, unless you have more than $30 million, uh, in net assets, then you're, um.

You're not gonna face the estate tax.

But what I'll say is, if you're trying to build multi-generationally, if you're trying to create something that's gonna last, uh, that's, that's a, a valid
reason for, for accumulating money beyond kind of the standard of, if I got $5 million, I can be comfortable for the rest of my life, et cetera, et cetera.

So why do we, why do we do this?

Why do we subject ourselves to a, a, an identity that's taxed at maximum rate subject to lenders and lawsuit, subject to the bankruptcy and divorce court, and divided at death?

We do this because it gives us absolute independence, independence, individual independence, what wonderful words these are and who does.

Uh, but then, you know, one of, uh, I have, I have an empowering question.

One of the, the folks on the call is, uh, Dr. Marlene McMillan, who's been a wonderful friend and mentor to me and my family.

And she, she frequently will ask empowering questions.

And, uh, the empowering question that I, I ask about our absolute independence is independence from who?

And the answer is from every person who knows you and loves you, it is independence from any human being that can approach you as, as, as a human being.

Because when I, as a transactional attorney, when I look at this system, what I see is absolute dependence on people who hate you and want you to eat bucks.

Right?

That is what this looks like to me.

Okay.

And again, I think we, we, a lot of, a lot of our goals, a lot of what we're aiming for, a lot of what people are, are shooting for in life, um, is to be a sovereign individual, right?

And individuals get, individual investors get individual returns, right?

Building wealth is hard because you don't have traditional privileges.

You start over at each generation, I'm gonna say it again.

Your wealth is always vulnerable.

Anytime your wealth is being held in personal hands, in the hands of the people that are going out and doing stuff.

If, if the, if the place where you make your money is the same place that you keep your money, then it's always at risk.

Okay.

Um.

There is.

So the question is, is there another way?

And there is another way, right?

The other way is to have a separate column, a blue column, a safe column, a place where if you can get assets into this other column, and, and that column might consist of, you know, a trust.

It might, there might be corporations in there, there, there will almost certainly be LLCs and family limited partnerships and the whole variety of complicated, uh, legal arrangements that people use in their, in their estate planning structures.

All of that will happen.

Um, but it, it won't do you any good unless you understand what it's for, right?

What it's for is to give legal a legal identity that you can interact with, that this is your family identity.

This is a way of holding property.

This is a way of owning businesses that, that insulates what you're building from risk.

It says, Hey, if I've got stuff over here.

In the blue column, right?

Then it's safe.

It's, it's separate from the, um, the risks that I'm taking over here in the red column.

Now, sometimes people ask me as I'm, as I'm working with them, well, can, can I just get rid of the red column?

Can I have nothing in the red column?

No, no.

You can, you, you have, you will, you have your red column, you will have your red column, uh, for the rest of your life.

And, and you want to have that.

You wanna have a place where you're gonna take risks, where you're gonna assume liabilities when, you know, one of the things that that is so frustrating to, to people about trust fund families
is when they try to go and do a deal with somebody and this trust fund descendant, well, suddenly at some certain point it switches and you're doing business with this shadowy other entity.

What you, when you do business with, with someone, you want them to be the person that's making the deal, and then to be the person that's responsible for the deal.

Now, that doesn't mean that you should get the ability to attack their entire, their family's entire asset base because you did a deal with them, right?

And so the, the link between the family identity, the way that the family gets stuff out of, of the red column and into the blue column,
that's, you know, that's the subject of, that's what the state tax and that's what trust, uh, uh, trust structures are all about.

Um, that's, that's what all the lawyers that, that, that do, that are, are working on.

But from a conceptual perspective, again, I just want, I wanna put these two boxes in front of you.

You have your individual identity and everything in there is subject to the jurisdiction of all of the things.

Um.

And you can take risks there, which is good.

You need that.

You need to take risks there.

So you can, you can create wealth, but you also gotta recognize that anything that can touch you in, in, in the red column, anything that you control with an unrestricted way, okay?

That's, that's at risk.

And what we want is to have another, another box, another place to put assets so that once you get them out of your name and into the family box, into the blue column, then they're safe.

Now this requires a certain level of virtue.

What the thing that, the thing that makes that blue column animated is some level of family covenant.

Some level of commitment to a set of family values, which must at certain points in times, defer and diverge from your personal interests.

Okay.

That doesn't mean that it's necessarily like you suffer constantly doing your family's will.

You know, the, the, the Bible verse, the lines for me have fallen in pleasant places.

Behold I have a beautiful inheritance.

You know, most of the time it can be just wonderful.

It can be a thing that you enjoy doing, but it has to be different from what is pleasant, comfortable, easy, and, and always necessarily in your best interest.

If it's, if it's not on some level a sacrifice that you are making on behalf of your commitment to these higher values, it's not gonna work.

Okay?

So it requires a certain level of virtue.

But once you've got that, and, and the thing that is, when I talk to people, almost all of the successful entrepreneurs in this time and place, almost all of the people that are building wealth, they are building wealth.

And they're able to build wealth because they already have, uh, an allegiance, they have a set of principles that they believe in that they're serving faithfully.

Often, this is not the thing that is the most comfortable or easy, uh, thing to do for them, right?

That they are genuinely making sacrifices of what would be, um, you know, in, in sort of their, their, their personal interests.

Now, they're well compensated for that, but that doesn't make the sacrifice any less.

And so you gotta, you gotta have a moment where you start saying, recognizing that you can never get rid of the red column.

You're always gonna have a red column, you know, for as long as as you live, but.

Who do you trust more, right?

If the, because in a lot of ways the red column is sort of, you are negotiating with the system.

Your individual identity is where you go.

Again, you earn money, you take risks.

But, but all of the things that can touch you, all of the things that have jurisdiction over you personally, also have jurisdiction over all of the stuff that you keep in your individual identity.

But if you can develop a family identity, a family box, something that, that says, this is, this is distinct for me.

I might have access to a lot of these funds.

I might be able to give some business direction.

I might be able to grow this, I might be able to invest this, you know, um.

One of the things that, that's a real kind of eye-opener for people is recognizing, and you can have, uh, uh, some of these retirement accounts.

You can set up retirement accounts for your kids, and then frequently you can get to the point where you are, you are building wealth in accounts for the benefit of your children, and you're still doing it.

You're still playing the game, you're still the genius that's figuring out how to increase the value.

For most of the context that I'm thinking of involved real estate, but it's not necessarily real estate, but you're doing something that's generating enormous value, but you're doing it on behalf of your children, right?

The, the, the, the person that benefits from that is your kid, even though you're, you're the person that's directing the funds, okay?

You're, you're directing the investments, you have some level of business management, all of these things.

Um, when people get that, that's a possibility, it really excites them.

Well, what if you could do that, not just for one kid that you picked.

And, and then in 20 years it turns over and he's got the same problems that you have right now.

What if you could do that for your family forever?

So that there was a, a family box that was always, always, um, stable, always able to, to benefit the family, to give access to your kids, to these funds.

But it didn't, it, it, it didn't turn over in the way that, that most of our normal things, because again, most people, they think, well, I'm an individual.

I'm transferring to another individual.

And when they come of age or when they retire, or at some point in the future, this is gonna flip.

There's gonna be a transfer from me to them.

Well, what if, what if that didn't have to happen?

What if you could always be having the waterfall flow down to future generations?

Okay.

Now again.

And, and, and once you've got that, then you've gotta say, do I, do I trust that?

Do I believe in these principles?

Do I want to say Yeah.

You know, I, I think that, that my family's ideas are, are so good that they're gonna be around in a hundred years or 200 years.

Okay.

And one, one of the things that that, that you have to have to do that is a way of developing people.

Okay?

People say what, what is, what does a family identity look like?

What does that mean?

Well, it means having something like this.

This is, uh, uh, I talked a couple weeks ago about the great game and how you build in different contexts.

How you build the different pillars that constitute a great house.

Having a way of climbing a ladder where, where we start, Hey, we start at a son or daughter.

We, we might start at a son or daughter and then, and then degrade into a slave and have to get redeemed and have to get out of slavery, get out of bondage.

Hopefully not, hopefully you go from being a son or a daughter and then you advance and your wisdom and maturity and you become a husband or a wife.

Um.

Then at a certain point, if you're being a good husband or wife, um, then you will become a father or a mother.

If you're a good father or a mother, then your kids will stick around.

You'll be able to be a patriarch or a matriarch.

And then the highest level people talk about becoming kings and priests.

Having the ability to, to see how, how raw land can be used to, to, to build things from the ground up.

And, and usually if you're at the, at that fifth level of, of wisdom and insight, then you're, uh, you're, you're making very lar large amounts of money.

And again, you're, you're, you're hitting that level of political relevance.

Okay.

Um.

And one of the reasons, the, one of the things that, that I see that prevents people from developing a family identity is, uh, is a story that people tell.

And the story goes something like this, you know, I was a young man when I was your age, and this is, this is a father, this is a successful father talking to his son.

I was just wandering along and bam, God picked me up and dropped me at the next level.

Right?

And, and, and what I will say is if you have people that, that fell into slavery, they fell into some kind of bondage into some, some way where they're not able to, um, they're not able to, to get out by themselves.

Then frequently if they got out, it's because somebody else took pity, took mercy, had grace for them, picked them up and got them at, at, at a level from which they could bill.

Okay?

But.

Beyond that.

And, and, and for a lot of people, this, this accompanies like a salvation experience or a, a, a, a rededication of their life to God and a return to the
church that, that many of them, the church of their youth, um, that's what's going on when they go from being a slave back to being a son or a daughter.

But once you're a son or a daughter, you are in fact doing many, many things that, that, and you're doing them right.

When you get to become a husband or a wife, when you're a husband or a wife, you're, you're in fact doing many things that, that, and you're doing them right in order to become a father or a mother and so on and so forth.

And so what happens is people will, will tell one thing.

One critical parts of teaching of, of talking to people is always remember, if you're telling people a story about what you did or
you're telling a story about the main character, the people listening to you are very likely to do what the main character is doing.

They might say what the main character is saying to that.

Sometimes they'll say what the main character says, but that's not really relevant to getting people to change.

They will do what the main character of the story is doing.

And so if you tell a story that says, well, I was wandering around at the son or daughter level and doing nothing in particular, and then bam, suddenly I had a wife next to me, I have no idea how she got there, right then.

Don't be surprised when your son wanders around doing nothing in particular, waiting for the bam to happen.

Okay?

Um, and, and that's, this is just not a, this is not a good way to do it.

What you need to do is remember the lessons that you learned, okay?

You, there are always reasons why you ascended to the next level.

And, and a lot of times the, the, the issue here is honoring your father, whether that's your physical father or, or your heavenly
father honoring the, the person that was architecting your life and being able to say, this is how, oh, son of mine that I got here.

This is how I was able to get this woman, you know?

So, uh, for many years I, I disliked the, the organization that, um, that I met my wife at.

And so I would tell the story in kind of a negative way.

And, um, one of the, one of the things that I, I realized that a certain point was, you know, I was able to go into a, a fairly complicated
organization, establish myself, get, get assigned a kind of sealed off section of the organization to manage as my little personal fiefdom.

And, uh, and then I, I used that to protect people, including, and, and to help people with the, the, you know, deal with the dysfunction of the organization.

Um.

That, that was part of what allowed me to, to be successful and, and, and impressed the lady that I, that I eventually wound up marrying.

Okay.

But you have to tell the story, and you have to, you have to acknowledge that that's, that's what happened.

That you, you were given a challenge and that the challenge was in fact, successful.

You were, you were able to demonstrate your capacity to do something, and then the good thing happens.

Without exception.

Okay.

And, and so one of the, the key pieces of building a family identity is recognizing, okay, I need to figure out what that story is for me and for mine.

And I need to tell that to my children.

Here are the lessons.

Here is what I was doing.

That's how you build a family identity.

'cause again, when you do that, that's what gives the, the, the child something where they can say, you know, I don't wanna do this.

This isn't comfortable.

This isn't my nature, maybe.

Right?

Or this isn't, this isn't natural to me, but this is what my father did that made him successful.

And so I'm gonna try that too.

And that sacrifice that that saying, oh, this is the way I would normally go and instead I'm gonna go this different way.

That is the kind of thing people, you know, frequently will ask me like, what is it that, what is it that that makes this stuff real, that makes this past the smell test?

It's being able to articulate, Hey, this is kind of our family pathway.

This is, this is what it means to be a. Is, is we go through this progression of, of things and then, and then we expect God to bless us.

Okay.

And, and yeah, it's, it's very, very good.

It's very, very important to, to communicate to your children that they will be blessed for doing the right thing.

Um, and that is not, uh, that is not, uh, uh, the, the, the prosperity gospel contrary to certain folks on the internet.

So, and, and the other thing is sometimes you, sometimes you fail, right?

Um, sometimes you don't, sometimes you're not successful, but you still learned the lesson.

Um, one of the, one of the things that, that my parents really emphasized to, to my benefit was, Hey, we're not always gonna be successful in upholding this standard, but we are always gonna tell you what the standard was.

Right.

And so when we fail, we're gonna be very, very diligent.

You know, one of the things I I'll say about my parents, they were incredibly diligent about repenting to us and communicating to us, Hey, I was wrong about this because this is the perfect standard.

This is what it means to, to have our identity.

This is the way we want to handle this.

Um, and, you know, I, I think that that sort of thing matters and, and, and it creates this family identity that, that, again, read redos to, to, to glorious effect.

Yeah.

So, you know, I showed you, I showed you the, the family discipleship.

Uh, uh.

Um, slide and I have five steps in that.

And then, and then I also wanna show you the, the leadership development, which starts the first step is kind of a self-starter, right?

And, uh, and almost all people start as self-starters.

They might get beaten down into being mere employees, which is another word for slave.

But, uh, they might get beaten down into being mere employees if they've had bad bosses in the past.

But most people start as a self-starter.

And then when they master the second level of, of, of wisdom, then they're gonna be able to do sales and client representation, client management.

Then at the third level, they'll become a manager.

At the fourth level, they'll be an executive.

At the fifth level, they'll be a founder.

Okay?

And this hopefully for the people that are, that, well, for the people that are watching, you can see that these two slides, these two diagrams are basically the same diagram.

Isn't that interesting?

Um, it suggests that the way that you train your kids and the way that you develop people in your business.

They might not be exactly the same thing.

Right.

But, but, uh, but they are at least rhyming.

And then the final thing that I would say is, you know, succession planning.

Succession planning is again, the same type of development process.

And, and it's not super important that, that families that I work with have this exact development process.

And I should also say that this development process is a, uh, is a, is a, is a skeleton.

It's the bones upon which a more, uh, refined development process will, will need to be put.

Um.

And it's also very much a, a protestant kind of Presbyterian esque, Presbyterian influenced, uh, uh, diagram.

But I'll say, uh, there's a great book by the Hopper brothers called The Puritan Gift, and they go into the degree to which a lot of the benefits, a lot of the blessings of, uh, of American culture and, and American business culture.

The, the, the way that we were able to manage very large institutions, much larger than most societies had managed.

Um, the way we were able to manage those institutions was directly drawn in the American context from the Presbyterian church.

So, for instance, one of the, the fun things is that, uh, you know, general Motors, general Electric, you know, all these, these kind of general companies.

Um, I've already mentioned a book that you should read, Andy, uh, all these general companies, they were organized shockingly similarly to the Presbyterian church, the factories, the factory workers.

They were kinda like the members.

And then the, uh, the, the, the management, the, the staff of the, of the, um, the factory was sort of like the session.

And then the pastor was equivalent to the, the, the general manager of the factory and the, the higher levels that was equivalent to the general assembly and then the executive councils of the Presbyterian church, which is super interesting.

Kind of, kind of fascinating that, that, and, and, and the thing is, is that I don't think anybody set out to do that.

It was just like, we have to use the largest, you know, this is the largest, most complex, um, organization that we've ever used, that we've ever had.

And we we're gonna, we're gonna borrow from the other large complex organization, uh, that, that, that we've had, which is just sort of a, a fascinating, a fascinating thing.

Yep.

So again, the point that I'm making is family discipleship, leadership development, and succession planning.

They are the same process and they collectively create a family identity.

And, and, and, and that, that is what allows you to add money.

Having, recognizing that those three things are the same, rigorously implementing them as the same thing, uh, in your, in your process and in your structure.

That's what creates a family identity.

That is what allows you to put weight, financial weight on these, um, on these processes.

Okay.

So a couple more things that I'm gonna, I'm gonna say and then, and then we will, we will, we'll open it up for questions.

'cause again, I'm trying to end a little bit earlier so that I can give, uh, give some of our guests time to time to speak, um, because I know people have to go.

But I wanna say when you try to do this, the system is not neutral.

Okay.

When an elder tries to give wisdom, the world fights him.

Everything about the system is designed to render his hard earned knowledge irrelevant.

And I'll just note, this is not an accident.

Okay?

Not gonna go into how that happened, but, but this is not an accident, uh, when an heir tries to show himself worthy.

We talked, you know, last time about elders and heirs.

When an heir tries to show himself worthy, the world will often send people to beat him up and take the tools he needs to be successful.

Uh, there's a movie, uh, with, uh, Clint Eastwood, uh, that both the right and the left hate for various reasons, but it's called Grand Torino.

And, uh, Clint Eastwood was a factory worker.

He built cars and built this Grand Torino, which he has in his driveway.

And the, the, the upshot of the movie is, you know, his, his family is just, they're, they're, they're TROs, they're, they're woke tards.

And they, they, all they want is his stuff.

And they don't care about him, and they don't care about his culture.

Um.

Then the, the local Asians, the, there's a bunch of Hmong Asians that, that were, uh, brought into the United States, uh, by the Lutherans after, uh, or by the Methodist, excuse me, after the end of Vietnam.

And they, they basically taken over his entire neighborhood.

He's the only white guy left.

Um, and he builds a relationship with this young Hmong boy.

And, you know, he's, he's, he's trying to figure out why this kid doesn't have a job.

'cause he's a smart kid.

He's a good kid.

He's trying to figure out why the kid doesn't have a job.

And so he gets the kid a job, right?

He said, okay, well, you need to have a job.

We're gonna get you, we're gonna go out and get you a tool belt.

We're gonna get you a hammer, right?

I'm gonna call one of my buddies and I'm gonna send you off.

You're gonna, you're gonna go get a job.

And the, um, the, uh, the way the, the, the movie goes, he, he cautions the, the boy.

You just gotta show up on time, like make sure you don't show up late.

Um, because in his mind, the thing that he's worried about, the thing that's gonna, that's gonna ruin this kid's life that's gonna knock him on court is if the kid sleeps late.

That's the thing that Clint Eastwood's character is worried about.

Right.

So the next morning comes and he waits and he waits in about, you know, two hours after work starts.

He gets a call from his buddy.

He says, Hey, man, uh, the kid that you recommended, he showed up two hours late.

Uh, he didn't have any tools.

Oh, and somebody beat the snot out of him.

What's going on with that?

But, you know, we're sorry.

We don't, we don't know what's going on there, but we're, this isn't, you know, we're not gonna hire him.

So, so he goes and, and, uh, figures out what happens.

And the gang had a local gang, had seen this kid going off to a normal job and decided that that was contrary to their interest.

So they took action, right?

As, uh, as gangs tend to do, and Clint Eastwood in, in his way, you know, draws a enormous, huge desert eagle pistol and waves it around.

And that is the inciting incident that drives the rest of the plot, which is a good movie.

And you, and you should watch it even though certain people don't like it.

Um, and that happens a lot in my world.

I see this happen all of the time.

Okay.

Um, it's a, it's a. It's a thing.

You know, they talk about that in, in the 1950s the, uh, the school boards were meeting about.

They, they were very concerned about what to do about bubblegum.

That kids were not disposing of bubblegum appropriately.

This is a big problem.

They were like writing letters to each other about it, and they weren't concerned about drugs and, you know, weapons being taken into the school and killings being done, you know, on the school grounds.

They were not concerned with any of those things.

Um, and so we have to recognize, hey, you have to, you have to be smart about this, okay?

And we have to remember the difference between fault and responsibility.

It is not the fault of the elder that globalists are wrecking the economy and rendering his past experience useless.

It's not his fault he didn't do that, right?

It is not the fault of the air.

I mean, I mean, maybe he did right?

If, if, if, if he did, then he probably has enough money to, to at least make some amends.

Anyway, we'll talk about that later.

It is not the fault of the air that woke bullies are blocking him from climbing the corporate ladder or the property ladder.

Okay.

But someone has to step up and take responsibility.

If you wanna be a household, you have to glean principles from the past while listening to the rising generations on current realities.

Right?

And, and, and a principle is a, is an understanding of, of principles are, are always applicable.

They apply 100% of the time.

So a principle is not a recollection of past events, right?

It's not a recollection of past events.

It is an understanding of why in certain conditions, certain behavior works.

And that allows you to look at changed circumstances, changed conditions, and give new behavior that will still work because you understand the underlying principle.

Okay?

And you also gotta take seriously that there is a system which does not like you.

Alright?

And take reasonable precautions when re resources are transferred.

People sometimes ask me, well, why can't I just keep all my money in my name and transfer it to, to my kid?

Right?

Um, when, when, when he comes of age and, and, and, and that'll work.

We don't, we don't need to build this stuff.

Well.

You know, I, I wish that were true.

I wish that were true, but it hasn't worked out for a lot of people.

Okay?

So, but if you can do this right, if you can do this, you will begin to live your life according to a code, a set of principles.

You have to articulate and draw those principles from your greatest successes and your worst failures, and communicate them effectively to the next generation.

Your relationship with faith, family and finances will become totally different from a normal American.

And people will say, well, what does, what does that look like?

And I say, it looks like the man with three sons.

Okay, so he had a man with three sons and the first son wanted to do exactly what his father did.

The second son wanted to take new territory and 10 x the family business.

The third son wanted to be a good husband and father and raise his kids to honor God and love their family.

Okay?

The first son I'll, I'll, I'll project, you know, statistically and stereotypically he's gonna reliably make the, about the same amount as the father did.

So if the, when the son was sitting adult, so say $500,000 a year, the second son is gonna lose every penny he can beg, borrow, or steal for four years in a row and then make $20 million in the fifth year.

And the third son is gonna pull, work a stable nine to five and be home for dinner every night.

And, and he, if he makes 80 KA year, it's 'cause somebody is, is putting their thumb on the scales.

Okay?

But if you have all three of these things, the first son is cash flow, the second son is growth and the third son is personal development.

A business with all three can really grow over 20 years.

Right.

But in the normal American structure, these sons, these three sons would dishonor each other for their different gifts.

Okay?

And so the way, the way this cash is out, what, what if you've built this, if you, if you recognize that you're passing things down, you, you build all of this stuff, you build these legal structures.

You, you participate in the covenantal economy so that you can say to the first son, Hey, you are the cash flow when you are bringing in that 500,000 every year you're in year out and, and you're working a lot for it, okay?

And it's also your job to take care of your brothers, especially your second brother.

'cause he's gonna be flat broke most of the time, right?

You have the growth brother, and every four or five, you know, 10 years, he's gonna make it, he's gonna hit it, he's gonna make it big and come back with a, with a, with a big harvest, right?

He's gonna be flush.

And, and what you want him to understand is when that happens, take care of your brothers.

And then the third son, excuse me, who's who?

You know, he's, he's gonna have kind of a, a quieter role, a more behind the scenes role.

But when the sons of the first two children, right?

The grandsons, when they're mad at their type A dads who work all the time, you know, the, the first son who works all the time, or the second son who's just constantly chasing these insane ventures, right?

And they have no stability in their lives.

A lot of the time when 'em, when their kids come to you and say, man, I'm so mad at my dad and I just wanna leave the family entirely.

Take care of your brothers.

That's the secret.

That's, that's the success story.

That's what allows you to know you've done this, you've taken care of your brothers.

Um, and so in, in conclusion, if you can honor your father, if you can pass skills onto your son, if you can take care of your brothers, then you, and more importantly, your house, your family, your household can join the covenantal economy.

That is, that is what we all want.

Um, at least I hope I've, I've laid out the, the, the case for that in these last several weeks.

So thank you so much everybody who's been listening, uh, to the, this presentation.

And, uh, we're gonna move to the q and a section, which as always is behind the paywall.

So thank you so much.

Uh, if you're, you're always welcome to go to great houses forum.com, and then you can, uh, you can join and then you'll get a access to all of these wonderful things.