Episode Transcript
ANDY: Welcome to another episode of the Purposeful Planning Podcast. I am your host. My name is Andy Stubblefield. I am PPI's Director of Education Programs, and today I have with me, Buddy Thomas. Welcome to the episode, Buddy.
BUDDY: Oh, happy to be here, Andy! Thank you for inviting me. I'm really looking forward to this.
ANDY: Yeah, me too. Well, Buddy, let me just introduce our listeners to you. Buddy is the founder of the Super Plan Family Wealth Group of companies, dedicated to enriching the world one family at a time. He is a highly regarded speaker and the author of four books, including Love, Wisdom, Money: The Family Fiduciary's Guide to Generative Wealth, along with numerous articles on the subject. But he is also the creator of the Super Plan Family Wealth Enrichment Program, providing aspirational families with game-like, enhanced strategic and educational oversight and decision-making capabilities. He's also currently serving as the Purposeful Planning Institute's Dean of Financial Advising and Wealth Planning, guiding PPI's content and thought leadership in that discipline. Buddy, both of these sort of roles that you currently have are part of the reason that we're here today: just to, one, talk about your 40-plus years of experience in this work, but also to have the opportunity to hear about you stepping into this new deanship. So, I wanted to start off by asking—you know, as we've talked about it—you've described stepping into this deanship as feeling almost like sort of divine guidance. The way you tell it, it showed up sort of the way your wife did when you least expected it. Could you tell us that story?
BUDDY: Well, go back to the 40 years. This started as a career, and it's been a great career, but what's happened is it morphed into my life purpose. This family wealth—which I didn't realize that's what I was getting into when I started selling life insurance back in 1982. But I love to learn, and so I got the CLU designation, and then I got this new CFP designation, which opened up a whole world to me as far as the big picture of personal wealth planning. So, you mentioned the divine guidance. I was single for a long time. I thought I wasn't going to get married, and I went on a ski trip. This young lady walked into the room, and she was on the other side of the room, and there was just this odd feeling that, "I can't stop this. Whatever's going to happen, I can't stop it." It was like, “I didn't think of the word destiny, but it certainly was.” And that was right around the time that I switched careers. Actually, when we met, I was in a different occupation, and shortly thereafter, I got into this industry and this profession. That was the only time that had happened to me in my life. So, when I saw the opportunity for the deanship, I thought, "Really? There's a Dean of Financial Advising and Wealth Planning? That's what I've been doing all my life." So I just filled out the application, and boom, here we are. This is just another level on my journey, getting into the essence of what it takes to deliver family wealth guidance. What does Steve Jobs say? "You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward." Everything I have done has been in this vein. Oh, Steve Jobs. "Connect the dots looking backward." Yeah. All right. So, what happens is, when you look backward, you kind of see what your path was. My path, as I say, morphed from a career into a life's purpose, and everything fit together because I came from a family that had a family business that transitioned through generations. Then I got into the life insurance business, which helps you look ahead beyond what's going on today and prepare for what happens when people pass away. The clients that I met along the way—and I became a CFP almost right after it came out, just a few years after the CFP became a thing—and there was personal financial planning. So all of these forces that have been my life's path have been bringing me to the point where we are now. I've been preparing to do whatever I can do to make this profession better and have more impact with the clients that we work with.
ANDY: I wanted to hear a little bit about. You shared with me that when you initially saw the title for this deanship, your gut told you these are two separate deanships. These should be two separate roles: Financial Advising and Wealth Planning. That was tied to this definition of wealth that you learned from Jay Hughes, and I was curious if you could just share a little bit about how you initially saw these and how you see them as connected.
BUDDY: Well, Jay Hughes informed me, educated me, that the definition of wealth goes back to the root of the word, which is two different words. I think one is English, and I forget where the other one came from. But anyway, they're two words together, and what it really means is well-being. I've come to define family wealth as love, wisdom, and money. That's it. It's the combination of those three and the balance of those three put together. Financial advising is one portion of that. When I looked at it, I said, "Well, that's two completely. It's not completely different things.” They're related, but wealth planning is the big picture, and financial advising is focusing on the money aspect of it. What I've come to find out in working with families over all these years—and that's where I came up with the term family fiduciary, because we all know what a fiduciary is—a trustee has a legal fiduciary responsibility to carry out the intent of the trustor and stay within the guidelines of the document. That's their fiduciary responsibility. But rarely in these documents, as Jay and John A., and a number of other PPI founders have pointed out, do they focus on the human aspect, the human element. They focus on the legal aspect. So there's a trustee, also, if they are a family member—and a lot of times, actually probably most times, the trustee is a family member. Now, they may go get some help from other technical people, but they're responsible for the family, for the love of the family. With love comes responsibility, and responsibility that's based on love is a moral responsibility. So I see the family fiduciary as the fusion—to use one of John A.'s words—when we talk about merging human and financial capital together, intellectual and financial capital together. That's the big picture, and the financial advice is the money aspect of it. Because money can be measured in dollars—you know, and financial capital can be measured in dollars—it's the easiest one to work with. So that's where I see our profession and why John A., Jay, and others started PPI. They saw that our profession was lopsided, and there was just too much emphasis on the money. So PPI, we're bringing it to the other side, and that was something that absolutely had to happen. It's still happening because the world hasn't really accepted PPI. I mean, when we go to PPI, we're all talking about this. We're all talking about the behavior and everything. I don't want to say everybody in the world, but the other professions touch on it while staying in their lane. So our job is to merge the two, synchronize them, and synergize them so that this family wealth is empowered when those three are in balance.
ANDY: So let me ask, I know we've talked about this idea of fusion, and for you, that happens between the EQ side and the IQ side. That's how you talk about it. Really, you see even this clash of these two sides intensifying in 2026. What do you see as your job, and the role of advisors, in bringing those together? How can they do that?
BUDDY: Yeah, that's a great question. To me, it's so clear. Another quick story. I worked in a factory right out of when I was going to college. I had a lot of time on my hands because I got my job done, and there was this big factory. So I would just walk around the factory and talk to all the people in all the different departments, being the social guy that I was. I got away with it because I had my job done. Somebody would ask me, "What do you do? What are you doing?" and I told them, "I'm an interdepartment coordinator." Because I could go and talk to people about what they were doing, I saw how it fit into the big picture. So I was kind of a big-picture person. What I see a real need for right now is interdepartment coordination. That was one of the reasons that, in the book, I emphasized the value of having an effective family office. A family office is positioned perfectly to interface with the family and with all the professionals who are specialists staying in their lanes—accountants, attorneys, wealth managers, insurance people. These are all on the technical side. Then, on the other side, you have conflict resolution, governance, and all the EQ aspects of it. But there are very few people who can herd those cats, for lack of a better analogy. I was thinking about it last night, and it's kind of like you've got a bunch of wild horses, and you try to hold them by the tail. All you're doing is keeping them from doing what they can do. But if you use a stagecoach and get them all going in one direction, and there's somebody there who knows where you're going and knows these horses all want to go in different directions, then you can concentrate their energy to, hopefully, get the family where they want to go. There just aren't that many people who are qualified to do that because we've all, to this point, gotten more specialized and more specialized. So what we need now, I see, is a demand for interdepartment coordinators. That's why I was so enthralled with PPI's idea. First of all, they recognized this imbalance. There was too much time spent on the legal aspect and the tax aspect of things. The tax and legal tail was wagging the family dog, and the families weren't thriving. It wasn't promoting their well-being because Generation Two didn't know why Generation One was doing it. All they could see was that they were doing it. When I joined, there was Rendezvous and Fusion. They were two completely different conferences, and they were in-person conferences. At Rendezvous, they were focusing on the behavioral aspect of the profession. Then, at Fusion, they were talking about how to integrate it—how to put the two together. Yet, on the behavioral side, there are some technical strategies and technical aspects of the IQ part that the behaviorists say, "That's for somebody else to do. That's a specialist. I'm working with the family." On the other side, you've got the technical people saying, "Well, this is all I do. We'll let the behaviorists handle that. That's where I draw the line. I'm not a psychologist." But in order for them to work together, I think it's very important to understand both sides and the fact that it's our responsibility to fuse them—to integrate them. So that's kind of how this divine guidance thing is working for me. I can't see any other way to do it.
ANDY: Yeah. Well, I hear that fusion, even for you, and you've made reference to it in the title of your book and at the core of your work with these three concepts of love, wisdom, and money. That's sort of core for you. I'm curious because what I've heard from you is that the choice of those three concepts as core to your work was, for you, a translation from the three capitals. So I'd love to hear about your process in choosing those and how you've seen them be impactful in your work, and how those values of love, wisdom, and money work together in what you do.
BUDDY: Well, I sat in the back of the room, I think I joined PPI in 2016, so it's been 10 years now, listening to Jay, John A., and all the other great speakers—David York, Marty Shenkman. I mean, there are just some fantastic speakers. At first, it was like, "Oh my goodness, this is gigantic. How do you possibly get your arms around it?" Then along came, I read Jay Hughes's book, Family Wealth, and right on the cover he talks about human, intellectual, and financial capital. I thought, "Wow, there it is. I can work with that." It's a trifecta. It's three things that have to be balanced. I tried to talk to my clients about it—tried to introduce it to my clients—but they could not relate to human capital. It almost sounded like human trafficking. You know, it's like that's an oxymoron. So I like to think about what my mother would say about things like that. She would go, "Human capital? What do you mean?" And I'd say, "Well, that's the value of being human." She'd say, "Well, that's love." Then, as far as intellectual capital—that's wisdom. Financial capital is money. So just by putting it into these common terms, and then realizing, once again, this is years of being in these sessions, working with families, and trying to understand what the practical application of this is, because that's where the rubber meets the road. We take these theories and concepts and apply them to real-life situations with real-life people making real-life decisions that are going to affect their lives and the lives of those who follow. Then, Jay had them listed as human, intellectual, and financial, and that seemed like a good order to me. You put the love—the human—first, then the wisdom, and then the money is third. We're mostly paying attention to the money here, and it's causing all these problems with families because it's like, you know, you have to be smart, but they don't talk about wisdom, which is a blend of practical and emotional intelligence. So that became, for me, kind of my gyroscope, where you have three different axes balancing to keep things going in one direction. If you've got the love, the wisdom, and the money all rocking and rolling together, then you're going to be all right. But if any one of them is going too fast or too slow, this is what I've found in 40 years of working directly with families. You can have too much of one and not enough of another, and it's going to get all wonky on you. It'll look like those rocket ships that take off, and then all of a sudden they go crazy. It looks like a balloon letting the air out. So that's how I see them fusing together. I did a workshop at PPI probably seven or eight years ago—maybe six or seven years ago—and the name of the workshop was Advisor Coordination as a Profession? It was a question. It was really well received. The room was packed, and people were taking pictures of the slides. But I still haven't seen—I think PPI may be in a position—more than anybody else, because we're already talking about human, financial, and intellectual capital. So we might be in a position to lead that particular movement if people see the need to have this balance of the three and have someone specialize in coordinating the specialists. That's the problem, and I'm always looking for the easy way out. So why don't we just get somebody who wants to do that or to do it?
ANDY: I want to push back on that. Just knowing your story, I don't think you've taken the easy way out much. You've put in the hard work, Buddy. I want to spend a moment, though, and give you a chance to talk about what I think is a really unique offering that you have. You actually introduced it earlier in the conversation—the term family fiduciary. I'd love for you to describe how you envision what a family fiduciary is. Then I know you've talked about this client that you worked with who was sort of a prototype for a family fiduciary. If you'd be willing to share a little bit about that as an example of what this looks like for you.
BUDDY: Well, there's more divine guidance right there. Back when we moved to California, I was in Ohio when I started in 1982, and then we moved to San Diego in 1987. I did a little bit of marketing. I just marketed to my neighborhood, and one of the people who responded to the marketing was a family. The patriarch was in his mid-40s, and he approached me and said, "I got your flyer, and I need some estate planning." The flyer was really kind of a family office general thing. You know, we do cash flow, we do the balance sheet, we do the estate plan. He had already founded three or four companies, and one of the companies had a hundred-some employees. He was concerned that if something happened to him, first of all, his wife would be in trouble. They had four kids under the age of... well, the oldest daughter at that point was seven. They may have only had three kids then, and another was born later. But anyway, they had these children, and he knew his wife would be in trouble if something happened to him. So he wanted to do an estate plan. It's very rare when somebody in their 40s thinks like that. He cared about his family. He loved them, unconditionally, and he was concerned. He wanted to do something about it. That's the persona of a family fiduciary—somebody who feels responsible for both the moral and the legal aspects. This person was also an attorney, and whenever I would meet with him, he'd started another business, or there would always be something I didn't know about him. So this planning case just kept expanding. What I was trying to do was, whenever I saw techniques that I thought might work, I'd bring them back to him and say, "Will this fit for you? Is this something that might work?" We synergized. Talk about fusion. He appreciated what I was doing. He could tell that I cared. I knew he loved his family, and he was just trying to do the absolute best thing he could for them. So we spent 30 years doing it together. I used to say that if there were a definition of family fiduciary in the dictionary, his picture would be above it. Talk about another blessing—he agreed to be our first guest on the podcast that we launched this past Father's Day. He now is struggling with Parkinson's disease. I asked him what he wanted to talk about. I asked him what he thought two people who had been working together for 30 years on family wealth would want to talk about—what our listeners would want to hear. He didn't miss a beat. He just said, "Survive and thrive." So our format on the podcast is that we have guest co-hosts, and the co-host gets to name the topic. Then we just tell stories about that topic. His was Survive and Thrive. So, family fiduciary is a key. A lot of times, the family fiduciary is, like in California, we're a community property state, so we can't help a family plan if both family members aren't involved. Now, in that particular client's case, his wife was raising the children, so she wasn't very involved. But we made sure we were keeping her informed on the big picture so that when the Parkinson's came along, she was not completely out of sync. So it's really about keeping the family—and everybody who's involved in the decision-making—as current as possible, according to their level of interest and capacity. The more you get them involved, the greater the likelihood that these transitions are going to be successful.
ANDY: Yeah. Well, I want to do something to sort of close out our time together, Buddy, which is a version of the question I hear you've started asking on your podcast. What are some takeaways that you would offer for advisors—our members who are in the field of both financial advising and wealth planning—and those who are learning more about this field? What are some takeaways that you would offer them about where we are now and where we're headed?
BUDDY: Well, there's kind of a clash between EQ and IQ. It's not intentional, but it's kind of that "stay in your lane" mentality. I do this. You do that. I just don't think you can keep them separate anymore—not with how fast things are moving today. First of all, AI is really juicing up IQ. Everybody has a higher IQ now because they have it in their hand, in their pocket. This is stuff that only a few people had in their heads, and now anybody has it anytime they want. It's really remarkable. So I see the increasing rate of this fusion between the two being in greater demand than ever, and it's only going to accelerate. If you believe that, then it's important for us either to lead the way as advisors, or follow somebody who knows how to do that, or follow somebody who's building that. We have a lot of people like this at PPI. Otherwise, I don't know if you're going to be able to stay in this business if you can't relate to the other side. If you're on the behavioral side and you can't relate to the technical side, or if you're on the technical side and you can't relate to the behavioral side, I don't think you can just put your blinders on and say, "This is all I do," anymore. What I've found—and this has been my struggle over all these years—is how do you get a wife who's raising four kids and a husband who's moving so fast that he creates businesses without even thinking about it? How do you get them together? What worked for us was a consistent client experience. There's a consistent client experience that's required. You need a path and a plan so that people come back and say, "Remember? Here's where we left off. Here's where we are, and here's where we're going." Then, as life happens, you assess how things went. You plan, execute, assess, adapt, plan again, and repeat. I like to say: Plan. Execute. Prosper. Repeat. You can't wing that anymore. We used to be able to get away with winging it, but now I think you need a formal process. That's why we developed the Super Plan, which I call a "plan of plans." It balances lifestyle cash flow with the portfolio, the balance sheet, and the legacy plan, all of which contain those three elements of love, wisdom, and money. Then it's just a matter of having a plan, having a strategy to keep everybody together, and then, not managing them. I just read a great book that came out in February called The Transformation Economy. Originally, clients came to us for goods and services. When I was selling life insurance, that was basically a transaction. Then services became investments—asset management. The same author who wrote The Transformation Economy, Joe Pine, also wrote The Experience Economy. About 25 years ago, he predicted that the next 20 to 25 years would be all about client experience. Now he's saying that clients want transformation. I know all of us are looking for experiences now. The whole new generation would rather have experiences than money. But someone asked me along the way what my product was, and I had to think about it. I realized that the product of our planning experience was the transformation of the client from one level of capability to the next on their way to wherever they aspired to be. That's where I see the industry—the profession. I've dedicated my whole second life, now that I've sold my firm and I'm kind of out of retail, even though we're still doing some consulting to keep in the game. That's what I see happening next. I don't know if everybody agrees with me, but I can't help it.
ANDY: I just want to tell you how energized I feel hearing what you were just sharing there. At the core of it is the idea that what really is impactful is a consistent client experience that leads to client transformation.
BUDDY: And it's got to be authentic. It goes back to that old book, Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. He talks about the mastermind concept. He used to do it in his head. Napoleon Hill would have Lincoln in the room, Watson, and all these great thinkers. He could picture them talking to each other and working on a problem. If we can just get in the room, egos aside—nobody's the "most trusted advisor"—and just work on the problem. In our case, it turned into a game. You have these three games: cash flow, portfolio, and legacy. If we're all just playing the game together, then we have a chance. The client's playing the game, too, and all we're doing is guiding them. Because in the transformation of someone, you can't tell them what to do. They've got to want to. They've got to want to be transformed. They've got to want to reach that next level. All we can do is help them get there. Boy, I could talk about that for another couple of hours. So thank you, Andy. I know I'm rambling on here.
ANDY: No, not at all. You're speaking to the core of what is called transformational learning theory, which is that it starts with our personal choice to engage in that transformation. So, Buddy, I am so grateful for the chance to sit down with you, to hear about your passion for this deanship, to hear about your new book, the podcast you're now producing, and just to get a little of what I hear from your heart: the love for this work and the wisdom that you bring through working with so many clients and their assets. So thank you for being a part of the Purposeful Planning Podcast today.
BUDDY: Well, thank you. We're just getting rolling, Andy.
ANDY: Thank you to all our listeners. We hope to have you back again soon. Have a good day.
