Preventing Money from Becoming Your Identity: Kristin Keffeler #164

Highlights

• Warwick’s identification with Kristin’s work (2:30)
• The benefits of understanding her clients’ stories through experience and research (5:38)
• The inner and outer landscapes of her career (9:35)
• The sportscar gift that left her conflicted (13:44)
• “The Myth of the Silver Spoon” (17:59)
• How Warwick’s experience affirms Kristin’s perspective (27:37)
• Finding identity outside of family wealth and business (29:34)
• The criticality of the proper mindset (34:13)
• Ways to sort out the challenges to healthy identity (43:49)
• Counsel for parents (51:46)
• Kristin asks Warwick a question (1:02:30)
• Her word of hope for listeners  (1:09:26)

Transcript

Warwick Fairfax:

Welcome to Beyond the Crucible. I’m Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Beyond the Crucible.

Kristin Keffeler:

Money at its core is just a tool like every other tool we have access to, and yet it is such a ubiquitous force that it stands in as a proxy for a lot of human needs. It stands in as a proxyfor a lot of, not just wealthy families, but families in general or poor people in relationships where it stands in as a proxy for love or power or when there’s hurt and sadness. Like the way to make it better is, I’m going to buy you a this or a that, or I’m going to take you to a nice dinner. When ultimately there’s a human need that’s trying to be tended to, but money becomes this thing that we use as a stand in and as a result, one of the things we don’t have is really good language and understanding about our interpersonal relationship with money.

Gary Schneeberger:

Helping people solve that shortcoming, particularly for those younger generations and families of wealth and influence, is the unique focus of the work done by this week’s guest, Kristin Keffeler. As a leading practitioner of family wealth advising called Wealth 360, she supports families of significant means in doing what she calls the inner work of money. It’s not just about managing portfolios, but developing a healthy life identity around money. Hi, I’m Gary Schneeberger, co-host of the show. This may be the most personal episode we’ve yet done from Warwick’s perspective, given his history as the 5th generation heir to a multi-billion dollar media dynasty in his home nation of Australia.

The ground he and Keffeler cover here not only offers insights and action steps to families like the one Warwick was born into, but to any family that can benefit from shoring up its relationship to money and its relationships to each other. At the root of finding that health, Keffeler explains, is understanding that the formation of personal identity, separate from the numbers on a balance sheet, is an important destination for all of us to find our way to.

Warwick Fairfax:

Well, Kristin, thank you so much for being here. We have on this podcast discussions with people who’ve every kind of crucible you can imagine, whether it’s physical challenges, victims of abuse, financial failure, every background. And in most cases I can say I try to empathize with the guests, but I haven’t been through that particular crucible. Here because Kristin is a consultant that advisor to families of generational wealth and the rising generation. This is something I actually, I don’t know if I know something about it, I guess I do, but I’ve experienced it. I know this crucible. This crucible is me. It was very personal, very exciting. Somehow this book filled me with hope. The fact that I’m actually vaguely functional, which I’m probably more than vaguely functional, is like, wow, I think that’s-

Gary Schneeberger:

Indeed, you are. Indeed, you are.

Warwick Fairfax:

… that’s quite an achievement given my background of, listeners all know this, I’m the, I guess the 5th generation, or I guess in the technical lingo, I’m a, is it five?

Kristin Keffeler:

G5.

Warwick Fairfax:

G5, thank you. G5. Exactly. Which we can unpack, of a very large family media business in Australia. We’ll unpack this, but Kristin, other than it being very personal, the thing that I came away with and I have three kids all in the rising generation, 32 year old son, 28 year old daughter, 25 year old son. They’re all exactly in the kind of folks – when I say this, this is not a put down at all, but I read your book and I said, I don’t know that it would be that helpful to my kids, because they don’t need it.

Kristin Keffeler:

That’s good.

Warwick Fairfax:

It blew me away because they’re very hardworking. I don’t need to tell them to work hard. They never got expensive cars. Not that we would’ve given it to them. Just their work ethic. They’re the kind of people that you want to employ them because they get it done, they’re humble, they work hard, they contribute, they have a strong faith. One quick story and then I’ll let you talk here, so forgive me. But my youngest son, Ravi, who’s in entry level sales in Indiana where he went to college, he had a car that we got him and he wanted a car that worked more for the Indiana brutal winters. And it’s like, yeah, I found online a used Mazda CX-5 and I figured out I could get a better deal on it if I get it from this dealer in Minnesota than I could in Indiana. It blew me away that he would care that much about getting a good deal, because people from wealthy families, they don’t do stuff like that. It was such a gift, not about the money but his attitude.

So anyway, I’ll stop talking and just say thank you for being here and I love what you do and let’s start at the conversation this way because what I love about you is that you are not just a practitioner, at least on some level you do understand what your clients go through and that is game changing, because clients feel heard. They feel seen, they feel understood. Talk a bit about why is that and how you got into coaching the next generation, a little bit about your family background that equips you or at least sparks an interest. Maybe that’s a good starting point.

Kristin Keffeler:

Absolutely. When I think about where I ended up in my work today, I had no idea something like this existed, the idea of human capital or family enterprise consulting or family wealth consulting, those terms didn’t even exist in my mind when I was in my undergraduate getting a degree in human biology and chemistry. And in my undergrad I was, part of the work that I was doing was really around human peak performance. There wasn’t a lot of structured courses at that time around coaching and really understanding human peak performance. It was a field that was just starting to open up. But that’s always where my hunger has been, is to try to understand how do we tap into the greatest depth of our strengths to create an experience that is, one, based in our ability to flourish rather than really focusing on our ability to suffer.

How deep can we suffer versus how broad can we flourish in the midst of the chaos that life is? That’s my core wiring, and I really thought that I would follow a path that was, I don’t know, something else. I got a master’s in public health and business and ultimately spent my 20s focusing on health and productivity management at the work site, which was a perfect confluence of public health and systems thinking and behavior change and business. I was happily doing that work while in my personal life, my dad, who had always been a successful entrepreneur building businesses inside businesses, decided that he really wanted to go and do that, but take his chops and use them outside a business and actually build something that was ultimately saleable, which is what he did.

So he and my oldest brother, when I was getting ready to go to college, they were starting a business that they funded, they got some outside capital and my dad remortgaged our family home, he went to market with this idea that was right idea, right time, economic winds at their backs was the mid 90s. And ultimately by the time I was getting ready to graduate from college, they were getting ready to take the company public. So they did that. They had an IPO, they had a secondary public offering some months later. And then they ended up selling the company. And this all happened in a relatively short period of time really. And so there was these series of wealth events that for me were happening at a time that was a very tender time of moving from being an emerging adult, just trying to find my way into the world and what was I going to do for work and how did I identify myself, how did I think about earning money in my own right and really starting to think about how I was going to contribute.

And all of this was happening at this time when I was just trying to figure a lot of my own self out. And ultimately I think my identity experience through that was very different from my three older brothers, just because of the time of life that I was in versus the time of life that they were in and each of their relationship to my dad and the company and that kind of thing. That’s just the backdrop to how I ended up here and in this role and the unique perspective that I bring, is really fed in part because for my 20s I spent a lot of time trying to figure out this landscape. There’s both the inner landscape of the identity of experience of like, well, am I a kid from a wealthy family? How much is that me and not me? And how much is that a part of how I think about things, making decisions about what neighborhood to live in and what house to buy?

And how much is it just outside of me and really part of my parents’ narrative and I have my own life to live, but there’s these intersection points. And when we started having family meetings, which was something that my dad started pretty early on, where the estate attorney would come in and the financial advisor would come in, he was really trying to help us understand how things were going to be structured and what was joint and what was separate and those kinds of things. I would say meeting after meeting after meeting, I would show up ready to, okay, I’m going to get this. And I got so frustrated because so often I did not understand what we were talking about. I didn’t understand the language of trust and estates. I didn’t really understand financial planning and what tools you would use and the language there.

And so there was this external learning that I was missing and no one was giving. And then there was this internal experience of just trying to figure out, well, what does it mean to me? Is it good enough for me to just go get a job where I’m getting paid some salary or is that in the definition of success in my family’s through my family’s lens, is that good enough? And so my 20s were just a time of a lot of trying to understand and orient myself as an individual and as a part of a family that I really love and care about and my dad’s story, which I’m really proud of, but it’s not my story, but parts of it impact me. So trying to understand all of that ultimately is what led me to the work that I do. It was me trying to figure it out and then realizing there have got to be other rising gen. We didn’t use that term back then. That’s more my new vernacular.

But there have to be other next gen family members who are as committed to understanding how to do this well, how to engage with this effectively as I am. And there’s got to be a way to shorten this learning curve about both the identity piece and also just the nuts and bolts of what do you need to know to actually be a decision maker in this space. I feel super fortunate that today where the work I get to do is something I feel very skilled at. I feel like I bring some real, a powerful set of tools around human peak performance and family systems and positive psychology to really help my client families, and then I also get to bring this personal experience to the table. So in that I feel like it’s a really safe space for individuals and families to be real about the parts of being in a significant family that are difficult.

From the outside it looks like it should all just be easy. You have money, you have privilege, you have status in your community, what are you complaining about? And there’s a lot of nuance packed into that, that I think needs a little bit of fresh air around it.

Warwick Fairfax:

So well said. I want to unpack here in a bit just some of the elements in your book and just some of the things that you do with your clients. But before we go there, it just sounded like you didn’t grow up with multi-generational wealth when you were younger. Your dad became successful as you were in college or just before. But there was one interesting incident, I think you got an academic scholarship to go to college. Your dad was very proud. I’m sure your parents were proud. They said, well, money, I’m saving on that. How about I get you a car? And you got a black sports car. But yet it felt like that was the first taste of a bit of confusion and feeling conflicted. Talk about that almost first taste of this whole new wealth experience was confusing and conflicting a bit. So talk about the story and why it felt a bit confusing and conflicting.

Kristin Keffeler:

For sure. That was definitely a very momentous gift, because it triggered a lot of things that I didn’t understand really for years to come. And I’ll say, well, the more significant wealth events that happened in their wealth story happened later. My dad had always been a C-level executive. He was a high earner. My narrative around money growing up was, I honestly just didn’t think of it at all. It was a non thing to me. I didn’t worry about it. I didn’t grasp for it. It was just like there was always more than enough. I didn’t think about that. But I was also the youngest, and so by the time I was getting to that stage of life where I was in the story of the car, my dad was a very significant earner. And so in that, one of the things as you said, and the stories in my book, he had said to me like, hey, you got this scholarship. I’d like to buy you a car. I was like, sweet.

And so we started shopping and I got this black sports car, this new car smell, got the really awesome radio, had this moonroof, sunroof thing. Everything about it was just like, it was just a hot car for an 18-year-old. And I’m not even a car person. I wasn’t a car person then, but I can still viscerally feel what it felt like to get behind that tight little wheel and this little stick shift. And then when I went to go drive to school, it was in the last couple weeks of my senior year, I had this moment where I was like, the student parking lot, there’s a bunch of trashy cars in the student parking lot, but we weren’t allowed to park in the teacher parking lot. And I decided it’s a safer place for me to go take this new car. So I drove to the teacher parking lot and then I had this incredibly sinking feeling when I looked around the parking lot and I was like, this is one of the nicest cars in the teacher’s parking lot.

And I slunk into school, and then really spent a lot of time in those last couple weeks at school feeling very uncomfortable. And it was only upon reflection now with the wiser mind that I have today that I realized that I was feeling a sense of shame, but I couldn’t figure out what the shame was for. It was like I knew I hadn’t done anything wrong, but I felt a little wrong. I felt like I don’t want anyone to know about this. And yet I felt the joy of the gift my dad had given me. I could feel that from him. But I also worried about the projection of my classmates and the teachers at my school, the administrators at my school, about what it meant about me that I was now driving this black sports car to school. And it really was, it took years for me to really understand what that car meant in terms of this tussle. It was very representative of a tussle inside me.

Warwick Fairfax:

I want to broaden this out a bit in terms of, and that’s a good segue into your book, The Myth of the Silver Spoon. I love that title because it’s this idea that most people who don’t have multi-generational wealth, whether it’s multi-millionaires or billionaires to think, oh, it’s all gravy, it’s all Disneyland, there’s no worries. Getting a job is not an issue. The family will pay you or you’ll have a job in some nonprofit foundation and if the business is big enough, there’s got to be some corner of the empire where you can work and just have your own little place in the sun. It sounds like very idyllic, the boats, the cars, the vacations, go to the south of France or wherever your favorite place is to go. I guess one of the reasons that was fascinating is this podcast is called Beyond the Crucible. And this is a crucible we’ve never really spoken about, at least other than my own personal story, but not more broadly.

You’re obviously a subject matter expert, not just because of your own life, but just as if not more importantly, just the body of knowledge, thought knowledge you bring to bear in your studies and research. So talk about just overall why there’s this myth of the silver spoon and why certainly for that rising generations, 20 somethings, early 30s, why having wealth can often maybe mostly but very often be a crucible. Why can money be a crucible, especially for young people of multi-generation wealth?

Kristin Keffeler:

I think to bind my way into answering that question, the place to start I think is actually broadening the lens. Because one of the reasons, well, first of all, I feel like it’s really important to say that I have never had a single rising gen client either in one of my client families or someone that I’m coaching individually who doesn’t recognize the power of their privilege. Any one of them would cringe at the idea that I might be painting them as poor little rich girl or poor little rich boy, look how hard this is. I want to be really clear that every one of them recognizes that they were born on third base. They have this sense of, yeah, I’ve been given so much, which is why it’s even more painful to them when they feel like, and I cannot figure out my life. Why am I so stuck?

And I think that there’s a lot of factors that create that circumstance. But one of the ones I think is really interesting and broadly applicable, is that we culturally have a very conflicted relationship with money. And we definitely have a conflicted relationship with wealth. So money being like, I think about money as the more tangible transactional, it’s human scale, money’s more human scale. You can buy coffee with it and go to the grocery store with it, and wealth is an abstraction. It’s like big numbers on a page that it’s goes up, it goes down, you have this sense, but it’s like it really is an abstract concept. It’s not a tangible daily concept. We collectively across the economic continuum have a very subconscious conflicted relationship with money and with wealth.

And there’s lots of roots that we could go into and look at historically and sociologically, why and how. But really I think, where we are today is, there is a tussle where money at its core is just a tool like every other tool we have access to. And yet it is such a ubiquitous force that it stands in as a proxy for a lot of human needs. It stands in as a proxy in a lot of not just wealthy families, but families in general or poor people in relationships where it stands in as a proxy for love or power or when there’s hurt and sadness, the way to make it better is of this, I’m going to buy you a this or a that, or I’m going to take you to a nice dinner. When ultimately there’s a human need that’s trying to be tended to, but money becomes this thing that we use as a stand-in.

And as a result, one of the things we don’t have is really good language and understanding about our interpersonal relationship with money. What’s our money story? How does it play out? How do you feel? If you had to describe money as a friend, what kind of friend would it be to you? Is it the kind of friend you would actually pick to hang out with and you think is like, no, that one’s got my back. Or is it a little fickle and a little fleeting? I think that’s the broader lens around this, is that we have a difficult relationship with money collectively. And then as it relates to wealth and people who hold wealth, we have this binary way of thinking about it where through one, both a sense of envy, like, must be nice. I would like that. And then also this sense of disdain or resentment, like, we paint a broad brush of wealthy people are whatever, fill in the blank.

It’s something generally not good. And I think that because of that teeter-totter of envy and disdain and particularly disdain, in our culture, generally in a capitalistic culture, we will hold up wealth creators because those are people who are doing something, even if we have a little curiosity or disdain about how they’re doing it and whether it’s based in goodness. But we will hold up wealth creators, but wealth inheritors are quickly discounted. What I think is really interesting is they’re just born into a circumstance that just is what they were born into. You have the lived experience of that. It’s not a choice. And it doesn’t mean that it’s something that they should say, well, I want none of that. But it also means that as an inheritor, as a rising gen, you’re absorbing the projections of the culture around you.

And I find that very often those inheritors internalize the message that somehow I’m not good enough. And then you add to that what it is like to be raised in the shadow of a big thinking wealth creator. Someone who’s doing, whether it’s a father or a mother or grandfather or grandmother or wherever it is in the family lineage, there’s somebody who has done something that few people are able to do. That Midas touch, the alchemy of turning lead into gold and really creating something significant from that. And try to find your own bar of success, when the bar for success that you can touch you can see is so high that it’s like, well, sort of my story of like, I don’t know, is it good enough just to go get a job making a salary? I’m looking at people in my family, my dad, my brother who just went and took the company public.

I’m never going to earn wealth that working in a public health job. I think that, you add what society’s projections are onto what can be a very complex family circumstance to try to find your own voice and your own path. And in the midst of that, there’s all these things that are joint assets. So where if somebody, typically an emerging adult might just go take space from their family and differentiate and find their own identity, when you have a family where there’s commonly held assets and you have to come back together to make decisions or you’re working with a trustee, there’s all this binding back to the mothership that makes it really difficult to do the important work of differentiation. I’ll pause, because there are many other factors that create a uniquely pressure-filled circumstance.

And one of the things that I really intended to do in the book is to open up the windows and let some air into some of that, because from the outside it looks like someone raised in that situation should have everything they want and need. And they do generally have everything that they need, but oftentimes that inner stuff isn’t being tended to. And their sense of self and identity and deep close friendships, all of that feels more difficult to come by. There’s not a lot of safe places for kids raised in this situation to actually acknowledge that they have some wounds as well.

Warwick Fairfax:

So well said Kristin, and it is going to be a little different because I guess as best I can help illustrate what you are saying and prove your thesis is true. Everything you said makes sense. I remember something my grandmother said is, something like being born in this wealthy Fairfax family, it’s like having dessert. And so you have really a duty to service to the community. So in my case, which made it, and listeners are obviously familiar with this, but that made it particularly challenging, is that this large family media business, which by the time I was around, had newspapers, TV, radio, magazines had the equivalent in Australia of the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, the major opinion leaders. What made it particularly challenging, it wasn’t just about the money, the influence that we had on the society was large.

It wasn’t just about making money, it was like you have a duty to the nation of Australia. That’s what this is about. Not so much the money. And so the pressure wasn’t just to preserve family wealth. It’s like, well, how do I play my part in helping my country, if you will? We had independent newspapers that didn’t promote one party or the others. My dad was probably moderately conservative, but the articles would attack politicians. It didn’t matter what party. It was truly an independent paper, and it always has been. So all that is to say is, the person with the business skills was my great-great-grandfather, five generations before. And by the time I came around, most of my family are more, I don’t know, journalists types, the business genes had long since died out.

So there was this sense of who am I without being a Fairfax? And in my case, you had three knighthoods in a row, which is exceptionally rare, and they’re all earned on their own, right? There wasn’t inherited. So my dad had the same name as me, he was Sir Warwick Fairfax, and then there was Sir James Oswald, and before him Sir James Redding. And then I moved to America, so I didn’t really do much to accomplish that. So I’m not a knighthood. They don’t have knighthoods anymore in Australia, it’s considered a bit too royalist and they don’t allow that anymore, which is fine. But just the sense of, gosh, I’ve got three knighthoods in a row, and how am I going to live up to my father, who was a great man, had his flaws. I loved him very dearly and admired him greatly, how to live up to his, he was, again, more of a journalist philosopher, if you will, but was highly intelligent person, wrote books on, I don’t know, comparative religion.

He was a fascinating guy. That was the pressure. So in terms of as you’re talking about money, I saw how my dad was married three times, my mother twice. I saw how money could be very damaging. We’d have parties of prime ministers and presidents and Hollywood people, and there seemed a lot of fake people. So to me, I’m a person of strong faith, and in the Bible it says, “Money is a root of all evil.” I got to tell you, in my Bible, metaphorically, it says it is the root of all evil. That’s not biblically accurate, but for me I just saw money as something that destroys and damages. So that was my relationship with money. I’m not a sackcloth and ashes kind of person. You have no right to your own life, you’ve got to fight the good cause, prepare yourself.

So if this was a biblical parable, I wasn’t the prodigal son, I was the good son that stayed home. So I did my undergrad at Oxford like some other relatives. Worked on Wall Street, got my MBA at Harvard Business School. I was one of these people, I’m going to show them I’m not some dilatant, wasteful. I’m going to work hard. I’m going to be different than some in my family. So yeah, maybe a bit of a chip on my shoulder. I always wanted to prove myself to myself. I don’t know if I’m a classic case, but I’ll pause here, but I think I fit a lot of the paradigms that you’re going through. The saving grace for me. We’ve lived in, my wife’s American who grew in more of a normal background. Her dad was an oral surgeon, which oral surgeons make decent money, but not at the level that my family did.

But fortunately the name Fairfax, in terms of the Australian media thing, I think it means nothing here in America, which I love. I can be my own person. But all that’s to say is a lot of what you’re talking about is really true. It’s just trying to find your sense of identity and who are you, and apart from the family business, it’s real. So anyway, I don’t know if any of that makes sense. I don’t know if that fits your paradigm, fortunately or unfortunately. Any comments or reflections on that?

Kristin Keffeler:

I think what you’re naming is, it’s the story arc for so many, right? You have lived to tell the tale on the other side of some really, yeah, talk about crucible, right? You have lived and the work that you’re doing now is so meaningful because it invites people to, one, recognize the depth of their resilience, and two, think about the value of their lives beyond whatever feels like that defining moment, the worst moment, your story arc is so common in the places I work. And ultimately, you’re even talking about, I was talking about the importance of differentiation, that’s a key developmental milestone, usually happens sometimes in ones like late teens and early 20s. That’s an important time to find yourself separate from your family. You had to move all the way to the US decades later to find that, right? And to find the space where Fairfax didn’t mean something, where somebody wasn’t projecting something onto you or holding onto your story that was like, wow, can I live beyond that?

I was really struck by what you said about money being the root of all evil. And I feel like my feeling is that our ill-formed relationship with money is how it can become the root of evil. But when we actually have a really healthy relationship with it, which takes a lot of awareness and a lot of work, money is an incredible lever. It’s one of the, honestly, the core, when I think about purpose in my work, there’s two reasons that I do the work I do in the market that I work in. And one is that I feel that human thriving is for all people. Right? So cross an economic demographic and I could have chosen any place on that continuum to work. This happens to be the place because of my own story that I have found myself. And secondly, I believe so strongly in the power of concentrated capital as a lever.

And we can use that, there’s governmental agencies and nonprofits and there’s lots of ways that capital can become concentrated for use. But I have not seen any agency work as fast and as effectively as an individual when there’s a need. So an individual or a family. Think about what happened during the pandemic and how quickly the Gates Foundation and many, many other wealthy individuals were figuring out how to get testing out and get support out into their communities. And they were able to do that very quickly. I won’t take us too far off, I’ll step off my soapbox, but I do think that money is an incredible lever, but it’s our ability to be in right relationship with it that allows it to be such.

Gary Schneeberger:

And let me jump in at this moment, because I’m the guy who’s a little bit on the outskirts of this conversation. I’m the son of a beat cop, and he didn’t make a whole lot of money. He did, however, he lived long, he lived to be 93, so he worked 27 years and lived off his pension for 36. So he got that part of it, he leveraged that part of it right. But one thing I want to make sure listeners understand as we’re talking even about families like Warwick’s, families like the people that Kristin works with, what you’re talking about, about money being a powerful lever, that goes across the spectrum of whatever amount of money you make. You describe on your website, the work that you do is real, messy, powerful, clarifying and momentum inducing.

And I think you would say, and correct me if I’m wrong, that that is for people who are in that high leverage wealth and people who are just going day by day trying to make it. Those are true adjectives for money in any context or at any level of accumulation. Aren’t they?

Kristin Keffeler:

Absolutely, Gary. I think that our path to personal freedom with wealth or with money is, wherever you’re at on that continuum, you have to do the work to find the peace and the joy of operating with money. So often there’s a tussle. I know that I lived it in my version of it in my 20s, and we don’t have the time for me to go into the story around that, but I was not getting money from my parents in my 20s. That was not part of their plan. I obviously had a backstop if I needed it, but they were like, no, you go make your life happen. Which is what I was doing. And when I decided that I wanted to leave my good W2 paying job and go follow this dream of getting to work with enterprising families and rising gen, I spent many, many months not earning.

In that time I found that I had a really tense relationship with money. I was trying to control it at every, I had a death grip on my savings account, and I wasn’t trusting, I wasn’t spending money based on my values. I wasn’t allowing there to be celebration of what came in, even when it was like I wanted it to be this big and it was this big. I wasn’t allowing myself to really actually experience the joy of the currency, money in motion. And ultimately it was that getting to the place of deciding that I was not going to live in pain around money anymore, is where the breakthrough for me was. And it was like, it didn’t matter that there was less and less and less in my savings account every single month at that point.

I had created a specific ritual for how I was going to spend in alignment with my values. I was going to celebrate everything that came in and I was going to keep working hard and intelligently to make this dream happen. And I think we all have that. I don’t want to discount the people who are truly scraping it by day-to-day. And I still think that there is room for that inner work that is messy and takes you down to your knees at times, but the ability to move into a place of flow comes from moving through that and into something more empowered.

Warwick Fairfax:

That’s so well said. I think as you talk about in your book, you’ve got to do the inner work to do the outer work. For you to be a contributing member of society from a wealthy background and be able to give, as you mentioned that Gates family did in the pandemic too, but do those sorts of things. If you don’t have a foundation with the inner work, that tends not to happen. And certainly I found that in my case. I want to talk a bit about, obviously with the rising generation, just the whole identity is a huge issue, finding your place in the world and certainly was for me, what helped is going to Oxford in England, nobody knew much about Australia, and they almost joked about, okay, so you’re a wealthy family in Australia. Some of the more pompous people would say, well, we think of Australians like convicts.

So in terms of the social hierarchy, you’ve got the upper class, the middle class, lower class, and then convicts and Australians. Okay, so you’re a wealthy convict. Oh great, who cares? I actually loved that. That was a badge of honor, but a whole other story. Worked on Wall Street, Harvard Business School. So all of those things enabled me to prove myself to myself, so that it gave me little drops of confidence that I could work hard and achieve things. And for me, the bigger issue wasn’t so much about the money, although it was, as listeners know, after the $2 billion takeover after my dad died to restore the company to the ideals of the founder, that having failed, it was more me being responsible for 150 year old family company going out of the family. That was really the dagger in the heart that I had to deal with.

Money is not the motivator. But I began to see, look, I don’t have to achieve what John Fairfax my great-great-grandfather did. I can form my own path because I’m a person of faith. I believe God loves us all unconditionally, be we rich, poor, or what have you. I find my own path to contribution, and now I have a much healthier attitude to money. But it took years to get there. I started off, I’d drive into the executive parking lot at John Fairfax Ltd, that had their Daimlers and Mercedes. I had my red Toyota Camry. That was the badge of honor. I wasn’t going to have the fancy car. I was inverse snobbery, if you will. But gradually from there, the years went by, I got a Volvo and that I was a little cringing about that. And then I said, okay, I think I can handle an Audi, which I drive now.

It’s not right or wrong, but you speak to me 30 years ago, I still wouldn’t buy a Rolls or Ferrari. I’m not judging, that would be a step too far for me, rightly or wrongly. So now I have a better attitude to money, but I’ll pause from my story and just talk about how you connect the inner work to the outer work, how you work with the rising generation. You’ve got many case studies in your book, to have a proper sense of identity and self-worth so that they can begin to be contributing members of society either through some foundation, through their own work, and how you make that change, because it’s clearly not easy. Every family has its own challenges and dysfunctions and attitudes about money and control.

What are some of the principles you use to change the inner work or the inner game so that they can be contributing members of society and use that wealth for positive purposes?

Kristin Keffeler:

It’s such a big question.

Warwick Fairfax:

Sorry.

Kristin Keffeler:

We could do a day long course in that. A couple pieces that are maybe important way points to talk about in this is that, one, the formation of individual identity is so fundamentally important for all people, particularly the 20s are a really important age generally, where people build a lot of identity capital. And identity capital is like the experiences and it’s the barista job, and the I worked in the mail room and all the things that one does to help them get a sense of what they like and don’t like. Who are they? And if everybody in my family was a doctor, but I decided to go, I don’t know, pursue painting, how does it feel to be an outgroup of the family? And can I find my voice and myself in that? And that is all about pushing on the edges of one’s own bubble of self. How much is me and how much is my family?

And how do I define myself and how can I be both in relationship with my family and still stand as an individual? All people need to do that. That’s not an affluent family thing or an affluent individual thing. But the thing that wealth and a significant family name can do, is start to create more noise in that system when you’re trying to find your identity. And so things that often happen, I often will hear family members say, particularly if they have a last name that’s on a building, the name of a company in their community, and they will say, I want to move as far away as I can. I want to go someplace where no one knows what a X, Y, Z family member. They don’t know that name. It means nothing to them. So I can just be me.

And that I think is actually a really healthy part of identity formation, particularly if then one can come back and hold their own in the midst of the bigness of their name. I think one waypoint is this recognition that the formation of self, of identity capital is so important. And then second is to recognize that wealth and a significant family name can create noise in that system. So then third is ultimately in the book, what I did was take what I do in my coaching work and try to define it in a way that someone could work through a process on their own, so that they could actually do some of this without needing to be on a phone call with me or someone like me. And so I won’t go through, there’s seven steps in this process because part is inner work and part is outer work, meaning the inner work is the who am I? What’s the mindset I have?

The outer work is what behaviors do I have and how do they align with who I am on the inside? So what I will say though is that without going through all seven steps, is that really recognizing the impact of mindset. So mindset is, it’s like the big filter. If I think that the world thinks that I’m not worthy, that’s a mindset that I’m taking every piece of data from the world into me through this filter of unworthy. So you have to be very clear about what mindset you want to cultivate and be vigilant in continuing to own that mindset, work through. Sometimes it’s like because you have to shift into like, no, I am worthy. I am worthy because I’m a human. I am loved by God. I have a place on this earth. And so how can I use a mindset of worthiness, then align my beliefs with that?

And then ultimately it’s getting really clear step by step of creating that alignment from the inside out. And then your actions need to align with who you are being. So if you are someone who is worthy, then one of the ways that rising gen, and this will be my last point on this. Just an example of what it means to take that inner work and externalize it, is I will often talk to rising gen who say things like, I shouldn’t go take that job because I don’t actually need the money, but somebody else does. I appreciate the heart in that, and one of the things that I want them to understand is, is that coming from a place of unworthiness? I’m not worthy. I don’t want to put myself out there in a position where I’m going to have to get paid and get judged by my actions at work.

What is that really coming from? And you have to understand where the root of that is before you understand whether that action is a right action or a misaligned action.

Warwick Fairfax:

What you say makes so much sense. As I think about really one of the things in the book that really struck a chord, everything did, but in particular the whole sense of identity. And as a rising generation, 20 something, early 30s, when this whole takeover thing happened, I was 26. I was right in the middle of that. And yes, I’d achieved some things. Yes, legacy probably played some role with Oxford, but I got good grades and you had to pass a competitive exam. And I did well at my college, at Oxford and Harvard MBA, the family helped that much there. I was able to prove myself to myself. But for many, this is conflicting seas of identity. Some may, as you write in the book, over identify, and I have family members who are like that. It’s like, I’m a Fairfax, which means a lot in Sydney.

For me, I was at the other end of the spectrum. It’s like, that doesn’t mean I’m better or worse than anybody else. I don’t want my identity to be wrapped up in that. So I fought that a bit. But just trying to find self-worth outside of your name, not feeling worthless because you’re a Fairfax or Rockefeller or not feeling like you’re better than every human on the planet. Both extremes are not psychologically helpful or healthy. But just finding ways to, as you say very well in the book, to clear that inner clutter, find a sense of self-worth from within. Or I guess from my perspective, I believe, we’re all children of God and loved by God unconditionally. We all have inherent value and worth. That was the core of my finding meaning and purpose. And then beginning to find things I could do well to help others.

So again, I don’t want to make it all about my story here, but for me, one can analogize it for others, being an elder at my local evangelical church for many years and before on my kids school board for a long time. The pastor of my church in Annapolis asked me to give a 10-minute sum illustration on what I went through and what I felt like I’d learned. And amazingly so many people weeks and months after said, well, Warwick, your story really helped me. And I’m like, how many other former media moguls or rising generation, people of wealth, Annapolis is a reasonably okay place, but no, it was a cross section of society. So that floored me. If somehow what I went through could help others and my own crucible, that motivated me. So it took a number of years to write the book and what I do now with Beyond the Crucible, and it’s very motivating, it’s very uplifting.

Because I feel like I’m using who I am and my story to help others, and in its own way it can be healing. That’s not a prescription for every rising generation person, but there’s a metaphor, if you will, that understanding who you are separate than wealth and position and finding a way to contribute. And then money, we try to give generously, if not very generously, to things that we believe in. We try to be responsible for what we have. But that inner work is so critical, especially in your 20s, early 30s, figuring out who you are. Everybody has different baggage depending on the family they grow up in. But I guess as we maybe, I don’t know if we’re quite ready to begin to land the plane, but we’re at least on the other side of the halfway line.

For young people, maybe there’s a rising generation person, and maybe they’re not multimillionaires, but even if you had a mom or dad who has an accounting firm, a law firm or their doctors, there’s still pressures at a different levels. Who am I other than I’m the son or daughter of so-and-so who’s well known in my community? You don’t have to be multimillionaires to have this pressure. What would some helpful thoughts about finding out who your identity and making that contribution? I think we understand the challenges, what’s ways to sort out the challenges? I realize that’s another big mega question, but if there’s a summary version of how you deal with some of that stuff.

Kristin Keffeler:

One of the best ways that I know to start to really understand who you are, is to have the courage to try things. You figure out what works and what doesn’t work for you. One of the things that is, and the research that I did that shows up in the book, and it was when I did my master’s work at the University of Pennsylvania in applied positive psychology, the research project I did was to study exemplar rising generation family members. So rising gen were at the top end of development. And I wanted to understand if there were specific character traits and skills that they maybe had in common that helped them get to the place where they could say that they were thriving and that they had lives of meaning and purpose. And one of the things that was common in those interviewees was a growth mindset.

So growth mindset being the ability to recognize that your intelligence is malleable, your grit is malleable. We have the ability to grow and learn and that we don’t have a fixed amount of anything. So people who have a fixed mindset get very stuck in not wanting to try. They don’t want to do something where they might be shown a fool. Well, I’m not going to get too far over skis because if I accidentally shoot too high and try to grab for something that’s way up here and I fail, everybody’s going to know I’m a fool. Where somebody that has a growth mindset will do that exact same thing. And if they stumble and fall, they’ll go, wow, what did I learn from that? All right, what do I need to take from that to move into this next thing?

There’s less fear around just trying things out and it being okay if turns out engineering wasn’t your thing, all right, let’s pivot. How do you take what you learned from what did work about that field and apply it to architecture? Right? There’s a lot to be said for the courage to try, is a huge part of being able to form a strong connected identity. And that is in part, the individual’s work. Each individual has to have that courage and parenting can really help provide a leg up. If there is a safe environment where when you’re sitting around the dinner table everybody shares both a win and a challenge of the day, and it becomes normalized that difficult things happen to all of us, and we can do hard things. We as a family have a culture that we are capable of taking on difficult things.

Then kids internalize that and they become better at taking risks and saying like, okay, I’m going to try this out. I have a safe base. If I skin my knees, I have some place to go home and be tended to before I go back out into the world. And that to me I think is a core thing that’s both individual and family culture that allows for kids across the economic demographic to figure out, who am I?

Warwick Fairfax:

Just one of the things you just said here was so important, is we’ve talked a lot about the rising generation and we’ve talked a lot about what you can do to find your own identity, find some meaningful work that has purpose, begin to get self-confidence, realize your sense of self-worth is not wrapped up in your family, it should be wrapped up in something external. All very good points. But I think what you write in the book in maybe one of the later chapters, maybe throughout, is just the role of parents. Parents of rising generation, especially like I was somewhat fortunate, despite all of the somewhat level of dysfunction in my family, is by the 5th generation, my father got up in a wealthy family. So both my parents were cognizant of not wanting to spoil me. So they went in with, they weren’t perfect.

I’m not perfect either, but they didn’t lavish expensive things on me. That wasn’t going to happen. With my first car I got this little Renault 5, which was a small car back in the late 70s, early 80s in Europe, because I was going to Oxford. I got half of that out of my own money for a part-time job I had. Well, that was really smart the way they organized that. It meant tremendous pride in being able to pay for half of that little car myself. So where I’m going with this is, with parents, it’s just so important for parents not to give their kids too much, to have a sense of work ethic, but a lot of people have work ethic in wealthy families, at least the people who make it. But a sense of humility, a sense of values.

You write about this in the book. What are the values that we want to, I don’t know, not transfer to our kids, but what do we stand for, my wife and I have tried to do that in our own family and just by modeling certain behaviors. One of the values that we had is I wanted to be around my kids games. I wasn’t going to be this absentee father the way some are. Every birthday when we, listeners have heard this story a million times, when we go around the table saying, what do we most admire about whoever birthday it is. It’s just we’ve done that for a lot of years. My boys who are more athletic and picked up my wife genes, she’s more athletic. Every single card they write, they say, dad you were at my tennis game, at my basketball.

Every single birthday for, I can’t tell you how many years. I guess that admonition is, I know if you’re very successful, you’re probably really busy. You got to be there for your kids activities, because that matters. So anyway, I guess I’ve given a little mini sermon there, so forgive me. But I guess, do you have a few words for parents out there of the rising generation of just things that they can do to at least make the rising generations easier at life? So much easier than it could be?

Kristin Keffeler:

Well, you said it a little bit and in some ways don’t make it easier. There’s a difference between, I think one of the things that is an important distinction, and this isn’t just for super affluent people, this is for people who just have more than they need to get by, financially speaking, that when we as parents, our best bet with our kids is to be thoughtful about what it is we’re actually trying to parent for. Because money can be a buffer. It can solve a lot of problems, and it can solve problems that make our lives easier, right? Oh my gosh, my kid forgot his cleats at the field again. You know what? We’re going to buy them two pairs now and stick them in the closet, that makes my life easier. I can buy those really quick rather than say, no, we’re getting in the car and you’re going to go down to the field and you’re going to walk back and forth until you find your shoes. Right?

There is a way that parenting, when you’re thoughtful about parenting based on values, who are we? Right? The value you named was that you really wanted to be present for your kids. That there was a sense of, nope, it’s not just that they are appendages in my family, but I’m off doing this other thing. But no, I want to be actively a part of their lives. That’s the most effective way to transmit values, is to live them. Our kids pay attention to what we do, not what we say. And being aware that money is something that can create a buffering effect, so you have to be even more thoughtful about what it is you’re trying to parent for. If you want kids that are gritty, and if you want kids that have a growth mindset, then being really thoughtful about how and when do you use the resource you have because you can. And when do you be really clear that you’re not going to do that? Right?

Your kids will know that you can. It’s even tougher to be, I think we have to, it’s where you have to be really clean in your relationship with money to be able to say, you know what, honey, I know that I can buy you those cleats. And the truth is, I think it’s more important that you really understand the value of taking care of your things. So we are going to take the time together to drive back over to the field and I’ll help you look, but we’re going to find those cleats, right? There’s a distinction there that kids understand. It’s like, yeah, I could do that, but I’m not going to because there’s something else that is more important.

Gary Schneeberger:

So Warwick, do you have another question or another direction that you want to take things? Because I have an idea.

Warwick Fairfax:

You go right ahead. You go right ahead.

Gary Schneeberger:

All right. I have finally figured out what my role is in this conversation, and that is this, my role is to be the applecart upseter. Okay? That’s my role in this conversation. So I’m not going to take this time before the captain turns on the fasten seat belt sign. I’m not going to take this time to ask our guest a question. I’m going to take this time to ask our guest to ask our host a question. Because we rarely get this opportunity, where we have a guest, in all seriousness, who has expertise in your crucible, in the beats of your crucible. So I’ll ask you, Kristin, is there something about Warwick’s background story, what he’s been through, many times in his conversation you’ve said you, you’ve found this in your research. Is there anything about his story, his journey that you’re curious about as an expert in this field?

Kristin Keffeler:

Yeah. I’m curious Warwick, of all the many, many lessons that you’ve learned through your crucible experience, what is the most valuable one that you would most want your kids to internalize?

Warwick Fairfax:

Boy, that’s a great question. I guess my most important value is my faith. My faith in Christ, so to speak. They all have a strong faith. Basically that we have self-worth as human beings, whether you’re rich or poor or whatever background, every human has equal value. Being wealthy doesn’t mean you’re better than other people. It also doesn’t mean you’re worse. We are all of inherent value. I think most major religions I believe have some version of that. That would probably be foundational. And we are put on this earth for a meaning and purpose. Part of the core of life is to find your own meaning and purpose. One of the things I learnt in very heavily amongst other things, I’m a certified executive coach and I have opinions on a lot of things, but with my kids, I have pushed them from day one, I don’t care what you do, I want you to do what you want to do. I want you to be happy and fulfilled.

I don’t push them other than I want them to be who their uniquely wired to be. And they’re all doing very different things. And I’m the cheerleader. I can’t tell you how many mock interviews I’ve done in the last five, seven years. I’ve done tons and tons. Actually not bad at that because coaching and asking questions is one of my key skill sets. What are your strengths and weaknesses? What can you contribute in this job? All that kind of thing. I guess the fact we all have inherent value, at least from my faith perspective, we’re all put on this earth to have meaning and purpose. I do try and live what I believe, try to have a humble attitude, not think that I’m better than other people. I don’t know, somehow, they’re not perfect, I’m not perfect. But they are living those values. They are people of faith. They are humble. They have a very good work ethic. They’re amazing people.

So the highest compliment I could give on my kids, I’m not saying it’s all me or my wife, but it’s their lives, is that there’s a lot in this book that was helpful to me and affirming, frankly, because I’m in a pretty good place, relatively speaking. But for my kids, it’s like, well, that’s interesting, but I didn’t grow up with these challenges of identity and who am I and confusion and money. They know that we’re wealthy, they know our situation, broadly speaking. They’re not people that are terrified by money, nor do they feel like they’re owned by it. They have a very healthy relationship. It just blows my mind. I don’t know, the highest compliment I could pay them is that a lot that’s in this book that’s helpful to me is not as relevant to them. And it’s not a putdown of your book at all. So don’t take this as a dis at all.

Kristin Keffeler:

That’s right. I say respond to you two, because you and your wife, and the incredible beings, that you have given them the room to become.

Warwick Fairfax:

Well, I guess because of the way I grew up, it was almost like a sacred cause that I wanted my kids to grow up differently than I did. I wanted to break, not the curse, but the whole five generation Fairfax. And you got to live in light of some superhero founder. I know we need to land the plane here, but when you have the founder, of course there’s a book that was written on him. He wasn’t just a successful businessman. He was an elder at his church. He was a wonderful husband, great father. His employees loved him. When he died, they said, his employees said, we’ve lost a kind and valued employer. There were no worker rights laws in the 1800s. So talk about the bar. He wasn’t just a successful businessman. He was an incredible human being.

The bar was as high as you could possibly get, but yet now it’s like, I don’t know, I can’t emulate him in his business, but if I could just be the kind of man he was in terms of character and faith and how he treated all the human beings. It’s not a competition. I’d be okay with 10% of the way he was, I’d be fine with that. I don’t know if that at all answers your question. Hopefully it answered some of it. Back to you Gary.

Gary Schneeberger:

You’ve fulfilled exactly what I was trying to do. I have definitely upset the applecart, so I’m about to go pick up the apples. But before I go pick up the apples, Kristin, I would be remiss if I didn’t give you the chance to let listeners know how they can find out more about you and your services and what you do. So how can they find you online? And then we’ll kick it back to Warwick to ask a final question.

Kristin Keffeler:

Thank you. My private practice is Illumination360. So illumination360.com. And that’s where most all my podcasts and articles and publications are housed there. I also am most active on LinkedIn, and that’s just Kristin Keffeler, K-E-F-F-E-L-E-R. And would love to get to be a part of any conversations that these listeners are interested in. So thank you for having me.

Gary Schneeberger:

Warwick, the last word. Well, not the last word, because Kristin will answer the question, but the last question is yours as always.

Warwick Fairfax:

We often ask this question, so I’ll try and apply it to this particular conversation. There may be a young person, a rising generations, 20s up to early 30s. This may seem like their worst day, they might have over-identified with money, under-identified, they may be ashamed, embarrassed. I don’t even know if my friends like me for myself. I can’t find anything to do that’s worthwhile. I have no drive, no ambition. I’m just listless, I’m depressed. Counseling doesn’t seem to help me at least maybe I don’t let it help me. There may be some rising generation that today may be, I don’t know if it’s their worst day, they may be in a bad, confused, somewhat despondent place saying, what is my role in the world?

I’m just this small cog in this big machine. I’ll never live up to my parents’ expectations. Why bother? Why bother? It’s all too hard. I’m just going to give up on life. I’m just going to check out. Maybe I’ll sit on a beach for the next 50 years and I don’t know, better than nothing. What would a word of hope be for maybe for that rising generation that maybe today’s not a great day, maybe they’re in a pretty bad place? I know it’s a big question, but at least what would a grain of hope or a ray of hope, if you will, you could give to that rising generation person?

Kristin Keffeler:

I think I would, one, I would say we all are worthy. There’s a unique gift that every single one of us is here to give. And I think one of the greatest sadnesses is, for someone to go through their life and not really even scratch the surface of what that is. And it can take the courage of a lion to be willing to go lean into yourself enough, to know yourself enough to tap into that unique gift. And yet it is there, like a little flame. Every single one of us has it. And it may feel like it is so small that you can’t even tend, you can’t feel it. But the more you actually let a little light, a little oxygen, a little fuel in there, the more that that flame grows and the easier it is to hear that small still quiet voice that is guiding you to the next right step.

And that’s all any of us needs to do, is tune in enough to know what the next right step is. I think that there is, so that would be the message of hope, is like, it’s there. That little flame is there. And ultimately the goal doesn’t have to be to go do something massively significant in the world. It is good enough to figure out how to be someone who is showing up with that light and that spreads to people in all sorts of ways that become part of a virtuous cycle, that when you give out, you get fed back to. Takes a little bit of courage, but it’s possible. And the last thing I would say is, every single one of us has at least one experience we can probably lean on from some time. It may be in childhood or teenagehood, when we know that we really showed up as our best.

And being able to lean into and uncover times that we have already experienced that can be great fuel when we’re at moments of feeling very desperate that it’s not there.

Gary Schneeberger:

I have been in the communications business long enough listener to know when the last word’s been spoken on a subject and Kristin just spoke it. So until the next time we are together, I’m going to steal a couple of the adjectives that Kristin uses in describing her business. In saying this, we know that your crucibles are real and messy, but we also know this, and Warwick talked about it, and Kristin has talked about it. They’re not the end of your story. You can learn the lessons of those crucibles. You can apply the lessons of those crucibles. And when you do, you can write the next chapter in your story, which can be the best chapter in your story. Because where that chapter will lead to as you walk out that journey is to a life of significance.

If you enjoyed this episode, learned something from it, we invite you to engage more deeply with those of us at Beyond the Crucible. Visit our website beyondthecrucible.com, to explore a plethora of offerings to help you transform what’s been broken into breakthrough. A great place to start, our free online assessment, which will help you pinpoint where you are on your journey beyond your crucible, and to chart a course forward. See you next week.