Today, I am delighted to welcome Scott Peppet, President of Chai Trust Company, the private company that administers trusts established for the benefit of members of Sam Zell’s family and that serves as the Zell family office. Scott was a Professor of Law at the University of Colorado from 2000-2018, where he focused on bargaining and dispute resolution, transactional law, and the complexities of multigenerational family enterprises. He is also an ordained priest and transmitted Soto Zen teacher in the related lineages of Kobun Chino Otakawa and Keibun Otakawa. He practices at the Hakubai Zen Center in Boulder, CO. Scott is a good friend of FOX, and he and the Chai Trust Company are long-time valued members of FOX and are very generous and insightful contributors to the FOX community.

Throughout his career, Scott has seen and participated in his fair share of enterprise family journeys and has had the opportunity to observe and synthesize what it takes for families and their family offices to be successful. He shares his views and accumulated wisdom on the subject of what it takes for a family to be successful in the long run.

We at FOX think and talk a lot about the concept of time capital – how we all deploy our most precious and finite asset. Scott points out that a simple yet powerful way to assess and guide the strategic role and effectiveness of a family office is to look at how it allocates and spends its resources – especially, how the family office leaders and employees spend their time. He describes the importance of – and potential cognitive dissonance associated with – how family office time capital is managed and expended.

One practical suggestion Scott offers to families and their family offices is to invest in cultivating, educating, and engaging the whole ecosystem of human and intellectual capital that serves the family – not just the family members, but also the family office employees, and even all the external advisors who are integral to the family enterprise.

To up-level and educate an entire system is such a tremendous undertaking and families are not the only ones who can and should lead and invest in it. All the other participants in the ecosystem also have a part to play. Scott provides his views on what family office executives and employees, as well as external advisors, should do to ensure the entire enterprise family ecosystem is flourishing.

This is a must-hear conversation with one of the most prominent and celebrated thought leaders, practitioners, and enterprise family leaders in the family wealth and family office field.