Episode Transcript
ANDY: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Purposeful Planning Podcast. My name is Andy Stubblefield, and I'm happy to be your host for this episode. Today's episode is titled Collaborating Through Conflict. Here to explore this topic and their unique experience in collaboration are Jeff Savov and Garrett Wells. Jeff is a trusted advisor to business families, families with wealth, legacy wealth, and entrepreneurs navigating moments of transition. He helps them strengthen family relationships, prepare rising generations, and build the emotional and structural foundations that will allow both the family and the enterprise to thrive over time. Drawing on his background in his own family's commercial printing business, years in sales and marketing, and clinical training as a family therapist and psychoanalyst, Jeff brings a rare blend of strategic insight and psychological depth. His work sits at the intersection of family dynamics, leadership development, and long-term stewardship. Welcome, Jeff.
JEFF: Yeah. Thanks, Andy.
ANDY: Garrett Wells is a client advisor and principal at Simon Quick Advisors, where he advises multi-generational families, business owners, and individuals navigating complex financial lives. He focuses on investment strategy, estate and tax planning, and helping families build structures that support long-term wealth and continuity across generations. Drawing on his experience working closely with families through periods of transition, Garrett takes a holistic approach to wealth management that extends beyond investments alone. His work often involves coordinating with attorneys, accountants, and family office professionals to help clients navigate the financial, strategic, and interpersonal complexities that come with significant wealth and legacy planning. Garrett, thanks for being here.
GARRETT: Excited to be here. Thank you, Andy.
ANDY: Yeah, so I don't want to spoil too much before we get into it, but from what I understand, this was your first time really collaborating together on a project. So, just to start out, how did you end up working together in this situation?
GARRETT: Sure. Thanks, Andy. And just to give a little background on the situation that came about, we had a longstanding client relationship with a woman, and we had been working with her and her relatives for a long period of time. Then, over the course of a few years, the next generation got involved, and there was a relationship between her and her daughter. She represented her daughter as the trustee in the relationship, and the daughter was really the beneficiary. It quickly became clear that there were more things happening than just, you know, what to do with the investments, what to do on the tax or estate planning side of things. There was tension, and there was, you know, tension that developed and created issues that couldn't move the ball or move the needle to get things done that we needed to get done to service this client and fulfill our fiduciary responsibilities. So, our business is all about what services and things we can offer, but it's also about identifying things that we are not specialists in or capable of advising on. That's when the decision to speak to an outside professional like Jeff really came about. We had been introduced to Jeff through our network here at Simon Quick, so we reached out and said, you know, "Hey, we have a difficult relationship between family members—a trustee and a beneficiary. They're all adults, and we think we could use your unique background to implement some strategies or approaches to help maintain a relationship between the two of them, while also getting some things done that we need to do to serve them as a family." So Jeff and I had a discussion, and we brought him up to speed. I'll kind of let Jeff introduce himself and explain how he integrated into the process as well.
JEFF: Yeah, it was a new relationship between me and Simon Quick. Garrett and I had never even crossed paths. I had spoken to some other folks, but he and I really met around this case, so it was brand new, you know. We didn't know anything about each other until we got thrown into this situation, and that's kind of interesting when you're, you know, kind of pushed into collaborating with someone—he didn't know me, I didn't know him, even though his firm knew of my reputation. That's kind of an interesting piece of the puzzle when we decided to do this podcast and talk about the whole situation and how it unfolded. I remember pre-COVID going to one of the PPI rendezvous a while back, maybe '16, '17—I forget—but I knew there was an article that had three "E's" or three "I's" or three "S's." I knew it was something. So I Googled for a while, and I came upon exactly what I was looking for, and it was by Ryan Zieb. I tried to get in touch with him through LinkedIn just to say, "Hey, thanks for the article—we're going to use it all these years later." It was called Collaboration: The Good, the Bad, the Ugly of Ego, Economics, and Expectations. So we're going to weave those through kind of telling the story. In terms of ego, it's not easy to ask for help. Simon Quick thought they had what their client needed, and they had a lot of great stuff, but they got into a situation where it was out of their realm of expertise. Some firms would push through or try to get a mentor or take a quick class or go to AI, and these guys said, "You know what, this is just not our expertise. We have a lot of stuff we're good at. This isn't it. Let's reach out for help." And that's one of the ego parts. Ego can be setting aside your ego and asking for help, or it could be not setting it aside and not doing what's right by the client, so a lot of respect for them. There's humility in recognizing that you need to ask for help and then still staying in your lane as things go forward. I had to stay in my lane, and there were times when things were out of my area of expertise, but I kind of know a little bit, and I had to be careful to stay in my lane and push it back to Garrett, and vice versa. We really found a nice rhythm to that. It wasn't a typical engagement structure. These guys had actually offered to pay me for the client—they had accepted a fee for some of this family dynamic work beyond the investment area, and they decided to take some of the money they had already been paid and pay me, which is another area of ego, economics, and expectations altogether. I think a lot of firms would have just said, "Hey, you figure it out—the fees with Jeff and the client." But these guys really stood up and said, "You know what, I think they paid us money and we're not able to give them exactly what they want." I just had so much respect. Did I sort of describe that right, Garrett?
GARRETT: Yeah, definitely. And you know, it does take some humility to say, "Hey, I think we need some outside help." It wasn't the first thing we recommended, but it became clear after trying multiple different angles that this wasn't typical behavioral finance stuff going on. It wasn't the typical X's and O's you see in the playbook and financial planning. There was something more at work, and that's what caused us to reach out, because at the end of the day, and I know Jeff feels similarly, it's what's best for the client, and that felt like going to Jeff and asking for his service to see if we could make things better here.
JEFF: Yeah, yeah. And so we hit on ego, then you've got expectations. Initially, it was a defined "we will pay 10 hours of Jeff's services for you guys to see if you can work out getting past this sticking point." It wasn't totally clear what was included—was this 10 strict client hours separate from calls and emails? Because there was a flurry of calls and emails, and it was kind of harrowing. At some point, we had to have a conversation: "Hey, I'm getting close to 10 hours—is this 10 hours plus calls and emails, or are we close to finished?" And that was maybe halfway through, so we had time to figure it out. It turned out, yeah, it was 10 hours total—you guys figure out what you need. I was able to manage the client's expectations. The first call was a Zoom call, and I was in one office, Garrett was in another office, and the mother and daughter were—were they in the same room or in different rooms?
GARRETT: They were together, I believe. Yeah, they were together for that first call.
JEFF: Yeah. And it was really intense. In my world, this kind of stuff happens all the time. I let it go for a bit because I wanted to see what it looks like when it gets bigger than it normally would be in front of a professional, and see how they handle it. And then Garrett decided—I’ll let you take this part.
GARRETT: Yeah, and you know, for us that tension and the back-and-forth or the banter, we typically want to interject, get back to the agenda, and make progress on items within that agenda. But we asked Jeff to implement his strategies and techniques, so once it was a little awkward and things were kind of coming out ahead, I sent him a note offline. I said, "Hey, do you want me to interject here, calm things down?" And he responded right back, "No, this is exactly what I need to see. I appreciate you reaching out, but I'll let you know if I want you to interject, or I'll raise it aloud in the meeting." But not only the expectations on how to bill or what the client needed help with—it’s really important to have that extra level of communication, because this is the first time Jeff and I have worked together, and we need to over-communicate to really know how to handle each other's side of the business.
JEFF: Yeah, and this Zoom really allowed for that. If we were in the same room, he might have just sort of looked at me, and maybe I would have just given him a knowing glance, and he would have shut up—or maybe he wouldn't have interpreted it correctly, and he would have said, "Hey guys, let's get back to the agenda and everybody calm down." Because it was on Zoom, he messaged me, and the mother and daughter had no idea. I was able to say, "No, let this ride," and then I was able to do my thing. And that was sort of—it was sort of like jazz. There's a great video I came across this past year where Herbie Hancock is talking about playing with Miles Davis. Herbie played a wrong note, and Miles Davis doesn't miss a beat—he incorporates the wrong note into what he does. He takes what was a mistake, and there are no mistakes for Miles Davis in jazz, and he just kind of coordinates and makes it a beautiful new thing together. So there's some of that that went on here. Luckily, we're on Zoom. He messaged me, I messaged back. He was able to see the way I let it escalate to a point and then intervene, and developing expectations around what's your role, what's my role, and how they're different, and getting to know that on the fly was really a big deal.
ANDY: Yeah, I imagine. I mean, there's so often I think with these collaborations that happen, you've got two individuals who do know each other, and so the uniqueness of showing up in a space where you're getting to know each other at the same time too. And so what I really hear is how important—like Garrett used the language of over-communicating from the start—of figuring out, okay, so what is your dynamic? How are you going to engage with this? And you're each bringing your unique styles and perspectives and sort of agendas, you know, based on your expertise into it. And so being able to work together, it sounds like what was really helpful there was having that curiosity of the other as well, Garrett, to message Jeff offline and figure out, "Hey, what do you want to do with this?"
JEFF: Yeah, absolutely.
GARRETT: Yeah.
JEFF: Go ahead.
GARRETT: I was just going to add, even with all that communication or prep meetings or email traffic, there are still things that you don't get right the first time, right? It's your first experience working together, collaborating. There's going to be things like Jeff mentioned on hourly—do emails count, do meetings count—or for us, what's within the scope of Simon Quick offering, what's not, but collaboration is going to help, and you know the more you do it, the more will you uncover and figure out ahead of the call, and that just makes the process so much smoother.
JEFF: Yeah, or screw up—which, when we got to the budgeting issue, so the mom trustee wanted—but I remember I only had 10 sessions, and things were in such upheaval that I was just trying to calm things down, see if they could speak to each other, and really help the beneficiary daughter just kind of wrap her head around how much do I want to be connected to my mother in this craziness, how much do I want to be independent, even if it means having to make my own money. There was a lot of existential stuff going on. Then the mom trustee demands that there be some kind of budget developed—what's the income, what's the expenses, and does it all fit. And I just assumed that the Simon Quick family office folks did that, and so I sent them the Simon Quick way. This is something they didn't exactly get into at this level, so I had to, you know—I wish I had a Zoom—I had messaged first before telling them, you know, sending them to Simon Quick. We had to go back and forth and let them know this really wasn't the kind of service that they provide, and it's not the kind of service I provide. We put our heads together and found someone in the state where they lived who was a local expert in coaching around the nuts and bolts of how much money do I have, where's my checking account, how do I write checks, pay bills, and still eat and stay within my budget. We found someone who was able to do it. But honestly, if I could go back, I would have said, "I don't do that. Let me double-check and see if those guys do." It was an innocent assumption, but it was incorrect, and it was an expectation that was wrong. We sort of fixed it—it wasn't a huge life-ending thing, but it's sort of the nature of the beast.
GARRETT: Yeah, just like that jazz analogy—you hit some odd notes, but you find a way to integrate it into the song and keep going, making sure the client is getting the best experience and still marching toward an end goal that is to make things better too.
JEFF: And there was real—yeah, go ahead.
ANDY: I was just curious about that, you know, the part of the relationship where you both recognize within your roles that this was going to move outside of the scope, and how you went about communicating with each other, and then setting up that outside consult, and doing that in a way that maintains the relationship with the client.
JEFF: Yeah, I don't think it was a really big deal at the time, although looking back, the mom seemed—I remember some comment from the mom. Most of it was with the daughter, but when you got access to the mom, there was usually some kind of, like, butt kicking happening, if it wasn't directed at the daughter right in front of you—it could be one of us. She was frustrated that this wasn't something that I personally was doing. I didn't have a lot of scope discussion with the mom. I was sort of sent off until things weren't going the way mom wanted them to, and I was doing some really good, deep, intense work with the daughter. But when mom came in toward the end, it was like, "You haven't been doing budgeting like we were talking about." It was really more existential mother-daughter independence versus dependence stuff, not budgeting—but there was some level of upset from the mom, and some shock. I clarified, and it was tricky, you know, sort of being called out like I wasn't doing my job and trying to manage expectations on the fly during that call. I don't know what you remember, Garrett, but we sort of got through it and said there are professionals who do this level of stuff, and we can certainly find it. But one of my disappointments is it sort of ended after the initial 10 hours, and there was so much left on the table because the mom was unhappy and just sort of ended it. It didn't go the way they wanted, even though some really intense stuff came up with the daughter. And Garrett and I—I don't even know what each of us knows. I know a lot of very personal and devastating life situations that the daughter is dealing with, and I don't even know if Garrett knows them. We don't have permission to talk about it, so we had to be very careful even about what we say. But I was helping the daughter where she was at and where she really needed some heavy-duty support, and the mom probably still to this day doesn't even know what we were actually talking about. I don't even know how much the mom knows of all the things that I know, or whether or not Garrett even knows.
GARRETT: Yeah, yeah. You hit on a couple of great points, Jeff, and one of those goes back to the economics piece. And from the start, we kind of said, "Hey, we're going to try 10 hours," but we also gave the expectation that this feels a little bit like a Hail Mary. This is two adult relationships that we just want to see if we can cast the line, get some bites, and if it really progresses in a positive manner, let's keep going. And I think it's important to say, like, "Hey, this isn't going to be easy. It might be short, and we don't know if it's going to be a lasting type of relationship." But going in and saying that from the beginning is just really important when you're collaborating, especially with someone who—well, to your other point, Jeff—we just kind of had that guiding principle of we don't know what each other knows, but we're going to continue on with what we can collaborate and partner on. Whether that's on the financial side, or setting up meetings and calls to go over specific budgeting items, or trustee-beneficiary issues, and if we didn't have permission, we didn't discuss any of that, as it should be, because there's client privilege.
JEFF: Yeah, and if this continued past the 10 hours, I imagine we would have gotten that kind of permission, and it would have been useful to share some of those specifics, but it never really got there. You guys were great up front, saying this is a really tough situation. We don't have high expectations of what can happen, but it's worth a shot to try. I'm still disappointed—in hindsight, if there was some way to better connect with the mom so that her expectations were more realistic. But it was one of those, "Here, fix my kid, fix my kid, fix my kid—okay, I'll jump in at the end and tell you you didn't fix my kid and I'm upset about it," as opposed to maybe being involved during those 10 sessions. I did try to do that. But yeah, you always feel bad when things don't end as ideally as you hope, especially with a new colleague. But I think it's why it makes it a good case to share, because it wasn't really clean and didn't end clean.
GARRETT: Yeah, and you communicating some of those items as well, Jeff, right? You reached out to me like, "Hey, there's two sides to this puzzle. Can we set up some joint meetings? Can you try to help from your angle to bring mother and daughter to the table and have some discussions, because I think it'll be beneficial." And it was great for you to ask us to reach out and help. It didn't end up, or the results weren't what we both wanted and intended, but we put our best effort and foot forward.
JEFF: Yeah, and I go back to that first Zoom with the private message. While I did let the mayhem kind of build a bit, I remember intervening, and by the end of that, mother and daughter were both like, "Wow, this was really different. It got heated, but then it calmed down, and then we did something useful with it." And there was some excitement there. But then mom was sort of like, "Fix daughter, and I'll talk to you in 10 weeks," instead of being involved. It just seemed exciting at first, but it was disappointing for me that I wasn't able to do more.
ANDY: I'm curious, what do you take away from an interaction like this? And maybe even—I hear the disappointment you're speaking to, Jeff—and also, was there anything that you would define as a success out of that encounter?
GARRETT: I think I took away a lot of things, and specifically Jeff's role—how he interacts with complicated wealthy family dynamics that are not just business or wealth management adjacent. I also took away that success is not just a positive outcome; there's a scale there. We just want to get things better day by day. It doesn't have to go from zero to 100 completely. But I think partnering with Jeff and having additional resources—that's a success for me, for our firm. Building a network of collaborators is very important to any business, especially the one we're in. Even though we didn't fully ease all those tensions between trustee and beneficiary, or mother and daughter, we showed we're willing to try something new. And I know they appreciated that we're willing to step out of our traditional comfort zone, if you will, and do things that we think are in their best interest, even if it's not something we typically do—and we're willing to pay for a portion of that as well.
JEFF: Yeah, that's great. And I would say, you know, an appreciation for Garrett and who he is as a person. I'd say we are both pretty emotionally intelligent and humble people, and that's not always the case with other professionals. Sometimes you get arrogance and controlling-type personalities, and it can be really tough. So it was just such a pleasure to be able to struggle openly, to question, to be curious, to not know the answer, and put our heads together. I felt like I had an ally. Not all collaborations go this way, so I'm really appreciative of that. And maybe it gives me some things to think about the next time I run into a difficult collaboration where we can sort of work around it. I certainly got to know more people at Simon Quick and learned about other kinds of collaboration, so I feel like there’s a nice relationship beyond just this situation. I'm glad that I was flexible. I set this up, and I don't usually work hourly—usually they're more intensive, more complex engagements. And I sort of said, "You know what, let's try it—10 hours, let's see what can happen." It was a fun experience, and I'm glad I did it.
ANDY: For PPI members or our listeners out there curious if they're stepping into a collaboration like this, what's something you might offer for them to think about or hold on to from your learning through this experience?
JEFF: I would certainly recommend the Ryan Zieb article. It's not very long, and it has a lot of very specific things to consider—things to think about, things to talk to the other person about. You know, what are you expecting from me? If this goes great, what will I accomplish on my end? What will you accomplish on your end? If we're feeling uncomfortable or there's some kind of tension between us, are you open to talking about that? Because it's likely to happen in a tough engagement. I think doing some of that stuff up front is really helpful for anyone, especially when you're collaborating with someone you don't know.
GARRETT: Yeah, and I would add, just partner with them while you're collaborating. Don't send them off on their own, give them a quick email summary. Jeff had some of those early hourly sessions where there were questions or things he would ping me about, and I made myself available to answer, discuss them, and partner with him so that he can do the best job—not just start from scratch and be on your island. You really want to collaborate and partner with each other within your lane. I'm letting Jeff focus on the things we asked him to aid with, but we weren't a ghost third party that says, "Come back to me after 10 sessions." It was very collaborative the entire time.
JEFF: Yeah, I would definitely express my appreciation for that piece—that you were available. A lot of times in collaboration it's, "Here, go do your thing, let us know what happens," but I needed stuff that you knew about—the trustee's intentions, the way the trust was set up, and how the monies were dispersed. There were specifics I needed to have good conversations, and you would jump in often. You made yourself available on short notice to either jump into a call or have a call with me to explain things I needed to do a better job. That's just invaluable.
ANDY: Well, thank you guys. I really appreciate bringing awareness to the 3E framework out there for people who maybe haven't collaborated before but are looking to do so, or if they have and are looking for something to say, "Hey, how can I do this better?" I think it's a great resource. And really, the emphasis on how important and helpful keeping that open communication is throughout this process—I feel like you guys not only talked about it, but really showed how you did it through this. So thank you, Garrett and Jeff, for your time today and for joining the PPI community for this podcast. Thank you to all our listeners out there, and we hope you'll join us for the next one too.
