You built a business that provides. Release your family to produce on purpose.
HeyFi Generational Wealth Advocates.
Family governance for first-generation families.
Joe Sugg, Generational Wealth Advocate. Family office principal since 2005.
Built for you, never defined by you
The businesses are producing.
The assets are real.
You have contracts signed, entities structured, trusts created, wills written and plans documented.
They're in your desk. A filing cabinet. A gun safe. For some of you, the underwear drawer.
And yet, the reason you're reading this right now is you're still missing one thing...
Your family has never sat down and defined itself.
What it believes. What it will not do for money. How each person actually operates. Who should be deciding what.
That's harder than it sounds, and not because anyone is unwilling.
A family sees the best and the worst of each other, often in the same week. Everybody is judging everybody from inside the feeling. So the roles get handed out by who is loudest, who is oldest, and who let somebody down in 2016.
Nobody in the room can see the room.
And it doesn't stay at home.
You can't tell a professional who your family is if the family has never said it out loud. So you tell them what you have. Assets. Liabilities. Revenue.
Same in the business. Same with the people you serve. Same with every giving decision you have ever weighed.
Meanwhile the decisions still get made.
They just get made by default, by whoever pushed hardest that week.
Everything you have was created for your family. But nothing can be defined by your family if it hasn't defined itself. Which is why you have words on paper that struggle to translate purpose into action.
The research
A family that doesn't define itself will be undefined generationally.
Researchers have spent decades on one question.
When family wealth is lost, what actually went wrong?
Three things, and they are not weighted the way most expect.
15% Technical failures. Investments, taxes, legal structures.
That's the part you've been working on. It is real work and it has to be done right.
It's also fifteen percent.
25% Heirs who were never prepared. Family education. Financial literacy.
Not their intelligence. Their readiness. What they understand about wealth, what they've watched you do with it, and whether anybody ever explained why.
60% Communication and trust inside the family.
Not soulless documents. Conversation. Connection. Collaboration.
Williams Group research on failed wealth transfers, with corroborating data from J.P. Morgan, UBS and the Family Business Institute.
The communication and trust issue isn't waiting on a transfer to show up. It's in the house right now.
It's not because anyone is trying to create division. They just don't understand each other, they don't see the full picture in context, and they don't know their identity and importance to the family.
85% of what causes wealth to collapse is not something most advisors are paid to fix.
Without the family defining itself, the statistics tell the rest of the story.
70% of family wealth is gone by the second generation. 90% by the third.
Those get quoted as a warning about money.
In hindsight, they're a consequence of conversations that never happened.
The seat
Your attorney drafts based on your input.
Your CPA structures based on your input.
Your investment advisor manages based on your input.
Your insurance agent protects based on your input.
Every one of them is good at the job they were hired to do.
Look at what all four have in common.
Everything they produce depends on input your family has never intentionally defined.
At the table, the advisors each fill the gap from the perspective of their own seat.
The attorney protects legal risk. The CPA calculates tax risk. The investment advisor determines portfolio risk. The insurance agent identifies insurable risk.
None of them are specifically wrong, from the data they have to work with.
They're all building on some version of your family. It's usually just the version you filled out that particular day.
That seat was never empty because nobody was qualified. It's empty because it belongs to you.
Filling the seat
Taking your seat isn't just a position.
It's a responsibility that can feel abstract, and it frequently leaves first-generation families overwhelmed.
So you answer the questions in front of you, the best you can, in that moment.
That works well enough while you're the one answering.
It breaks down fast when you aren't in the room.
The solution is simple, and you don't have to do it alone.
A HeyFi Generational Wealth Advocate can work with you to define the family framework and communication structure you use to lead the business of family.
When the family defines its purpose, establishes its objectives and casts the vision, advisors and family members alike can engage their own work in service of one mission.
Family governance has always existed for families wealthy enough that a succession plan required it. Which is why, if you've heard of it at all, it sounded like something other people have.
The truth is family governance is the missing answer to a question most never think to ask.
And the need behind it runs far deeper than succession.
Families are rarely told the reality that the more you have, the more noise will try to drown out the signal that is most important.
Installing your family governance plan provides a moat for a life worth protecting.
Every family has a cause that defines it. Most never chose theirs.
Clarity.
Before a plan can be defined, the family defines itself. Your advocate helps you answer things like... Who are the members? What are their natural strengths? Where are the friction points? What is the purpose?
With clarity, opportunities in your family's capacity are revealed. Without it, they are lost or confused.
Alignment.
This is where you define the mission, values and structure that align all the areas that matter most.
Faith. Family. Financial. Fun.
With proper alignment, there is cohesion. Without it, conflict is inevitable.
Understanding.
A family that learns together earns together.
We know that's not how the saying goes. But plenty gets taught at most families without anybody understanding any of it.
This is where truth gets shared. How it's defined. How knowledge gets tested. How risk gets weighed.
That gap runs generationally, and closing it takes a repeatable design.
With family understanding, all members expand collectively. Without it, everyone wonders independently.
Strategy.
This may surprise you, but by the time we get to strategy, 85% of the important work is already done.
That doesn't make strategy insignificant. It makes it fun.
The plan gets customized to exactly who you are. Everyone is on the same page. You engage the right people, to accomplish the right task, for the right purpose.
With clarity, alignment and understanding... strategy is the part you enjoy. Without them, every strategy meeting just feels like work.
Execution.
A well designed plan in a drawer is not execution. It's hoarding with a paper trail.
Here's the HeyFi perspective on what execution is... it's called life.
With the focus now set, execution is about more. Enjoying more. Growing more. Loving more.
Without the governance work you chose to do... life can be a chore.
Clarity. Alignment. Understanding. Strategy. Execution.
From this moment forward, your family's identity stays consistent.
Spelled out in a non-binding Family Constitution, integrated into the fabric of family operations, and available to your advisors so they can support what matters most to you.
Your family's C.A.U.S.E.
A note from the founder
What is a Generational Wealth Advocate?
That's the question I get more than any other.
I started using the term because of a pattern I watched crush successful business owners. They had figured out the revenue piece. The rest of life often felt like a mess.
Spouse. Kids. Faith. Enjoyment.
They all pull in different directions and often conflict with their business pursuits.
I get it...
In 2001, I walked away from vocational ministry on a mission to "figure out the money thing," and figure it out I did. Before long I was helping clients figure out their money thing professionally. That was the start of what has now been 25-plus years advising families like yours. Collectively, billions in assets. From the Greatest Generation to Generation Alpha.
Even after early success, I realized that the business required me to spend considerable time and navigate questionable characters. Simultaneously, the knowledge that my wife and small children were at home reminded me that there were other priorities in my life as well.
By 2005, I had started my family's office to make sure that my business ventures were always part of the most important thing in my life.
I had read books, heard sermons, and received motivational messages telling me that balance or priorities were the key to fulfillment.
It turned out the strategy and execution consuming almost all of my attention, and my clients' attention as well, was 15% of the equation to build wealth... generationally.
The other 85% was not asset protection, estate planning, tax strategy, or the perfect financial plan.
It is Communication. Trust. Financial Literacy. Family Values.
You read that right. Most of us are never intentional about transferring knowledge and developing relationships.
Without them the risk of divorce, drug and alcohol addiction, and mismanagement of resources skyrockets.
The truth that I have come to is that trying to balance or prioritize each area of your wealth feels like an internal conflict... almost like a quiet war.
And the only way to win it is alignment.
In 2019, HeyFi Generational Wealth Advocates was birthed. I felt convicted that other families needed an advocate who would help them integrate their values...
Faith. Family. Financial freedom. Fun.
Into their generational wealth pursuit.
Here is how alignment evolved in my family...
I refer to Faith, Family, Financial freedom and Fun as my F'd Up Wealth.
At my father's funeral I realized for the first time that he had passed those values down to me and they all started with F.
If you'd have met my father, he would've appreciated the delivery. I was also a son of a broadcaster but you can save that acronym for another day.
Your family will have its own way to convey its values. The process doesn't have to be overly serious to be effective. It just needs to get done to get everyone aligned.
Your Advocate will help you define your family's identity and purpose.
When you are ready to build wealth beyond business... We're here to help.
Joe Sugg, Generational Wealth Advocate
What people say, and what they don't
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Joe Borden, Co-Founder & Managing Partner, Wired For Hire This man impresses me. There are few I know that hold themselves to the high standard of excellence, integrity and truth that Joe holds himself to, and he is a man of his word. His understanding of the financial industry and business world place him at the top of his field. I thank the Lord He connected me with a man of such wisdom and integrity to help with the finances I've been blessed with.
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Josh Prickett, MD Joe seems to be able to communicate clearly with a broad range of individuals. From my observations, his goal is to find the recommendation that is best for the individual client rather than the offering that will make himself the most money, a rare individual indeed.
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David Holland, Pastor, Teacher, Speaker, Author Joe represents that rare combination of competence and passion in equal high measures. (Often, you only get one or the other.) He has an amazing grasp of financial strategies and opportunities. At the same time, he's not about building wealth for wealth's sake, but rather for all the good that it can do in a hurting world.
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Doug Jolley, Financial Advisor What I've taken from Joe is a vision put into practice. I look forward as the years go by to watching it multiply over and over.
You'll notice there are no family names on this page.
That isn't an oversight. It's the arrangement.
What gets said in your family's sessions stays in your family.
Request a consultation
A call to find out if we're a fit.
What your family needs. What problem needs solving. Whether what we do is the right answer for it.
If it isn't, we'll part as friends. If it is, we'll customize a solution that best meets your needs.
Every one of these calls is taken by Joe Sugg, Generational Wealth Advocate. You won't get handed to a sales rep who has no idea what you're dealing with.
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Some families want to see the work before they ask for it. Others assume a firm like this is built for someone larger than they are.
The HeyFi Wealth Diagnostic is the door for both. One person, two validated instruments, ninety minutes with Joe Sugg, Generational Wealth Advocate, and a written report naming what's actually in the way.