For families who share a business, real estate, investments or land
The part your estate plan doesn't cover.
Your estate plan says who gets what after you're gone. It doesn't say how your family runs together while everyone is still here. We help families build that part, starting with 30 days.
Charter rate open for three families.
Sound familiar?
Most families never designed how they run together.
It runs on habit, history and whoever carries the most weight. You'll recognize it.
- Certain topics got harder to bring up, so nobody does.
- One person holds it all together, and it's wearing on them.
- People are playing roles they never chose.
- Spouses and kids live with decisions they never had a say in.
- Nobody knows what happens if someone wants out.
These show up when a family is growing: more people, more voices, more at stake. That's what success looks like. The next step is a system that can move with your family through time.
The Family Office Operating System™
A shared operating manual for your family.
Wealthy families have long had family offices: the meetings, roles and ground rules that keep a family running together across generations. The Family Office Operating System, or FOOS™, brings those same tools to any family that shares something, whatever the size: a model, a growing set of tools and a meeting rhythm your family keeps.
The model
The Four Laws
Perspective, Conversation, Identity, Structure. Language for the pressures every family feels and few can name.
The tools
A growing toolkit
Every family starts with:
- A one-page map of your family
- Every voice, in writing
- Who decides what
- Ground rules for hard conversations
- A family meeting agenda
More tools join the system as it grows, like conflict resolution and liquidity and contingency planning.
The rhythm
We start it. You keep it.
- With us: the 30-Day Family Diagnostic.
- Then, every quarter: your family meets on its three priorities.
- Every year: your family refreshes its vision and values.
We set up your first meeting and its agenda. If you'd rather have us in the room each quarter, we offer that too.
The model
Four laws. One a week.
They aren't rules to enforce. They describe what pressure does to people inside a family system, so you can stop reacting to symptoms and start fixing causes.
Step one
The 30-Day Family Diagnostic
Thirty days to see the system your family is running, find where the strain is, and choose the three things to work on first.
We don't pick sides and we don't fix people. Everyone gets a voice, including the ones who stopped speaking up. Until people feel understood, no plan feels fair.
- Every voice, in writingA summary of what each person needs from the family, in their own words.
- A one-page map of your familyWho's involved, what's shared, who decides what, and where the strain is showing.
- Your next family meeting, on the calendarIts agenda is the three things your family prioritized.
Every generation
Wherever you sit at the table.
You built it
You want to design how your family runs before habits harden.
You inherited it
You're the second, third or later generation, living inside rules you didn't write.
You're handing it off
One generation is stepping back and the next is stepping up, and nobody has said out loud how.
Why we built this
“I've sat across the desk from my mom and brothers with an attorney in the room.”Aaron Kreais, founder
Aaron grew up third generation in his family's farm business. What he lived through wasn't a story about bad people. It was a system under pressure that nobody had designed. Today he runs Coldwater River, his own family's holding company, as a working family office. His book, Both Sides of the Fence, comes out soon.
Charter families
Three families at the charter rate.
- Your whole family, up to 8 adults
- Paid in full at kickoff, or two payments of $4,000
- In person or over Zoom; travel billed at cost
- In return: honest feedback as we go
We'll talk through what's going on in your family and whether this fits. If it doesn't, we'll tell you.
We don't give legal, tax, financial or counseling advice. We work alongside your attorney, CPA and advisors, not in place of them.
The book
Be the first to read it.
Both Sides of the Fence comes out soon. Join the launch list and get the four workbooks families start with while you wait.