Personal
Coaching
For wives
We want to help wealthy families stay together, get the most out of life, and raise great children who become responsible adults. To do that, we become the advisor and helper of the person who did not bring the money into the relationship — typically the wife.
In some cases, divorce is the best way forward. Then we help with that process and beyond. In other cases, improving the marriage is possible and worth trying. That’s what this page is about.
Wives are inherently strong but are overconstrained. We want to help wives become better equipped for the high net-worth lifestyle. We want to install systems to make wives stronger, fitter, more agile, more organized, and more productive. We also want to help make them more financially independent, so they can be equal partners, manage their own money and investments, make budgets, avoid debt, manage cash, and save for the future.
Marriage counselors all say that wives have these top-three complaints of their husbands:
“He Never Asks How I’m Doing”
“I Have to Handle Everything”
“He Always Wants To Fix, But Is Rarely Willing To Listen.”
Even wealthy wives have these issues. Given enough time, they can weaken the relationship. For wives, we want to make you a deal: let us manage all the day-to-day and difficult stuff for you — proactively — and you focus more on your health, fitness, parenting, skill building, relationship, and life goals.
For husbands
Husbands may not have brought most of the assets to the relationship. We can help give them more autonomy, confidence, and independence. Not surprisingly, that helps the relationship in the long term.
For husbands getting divorced, see our webinar for this group.
For most husbands, we want to take care of the routine stuff so you can do the important stuff. We will build systems to keep you one step ahead, rather than behind. We will work with you to make marriage equitable, so your partner has more autonomy and feels more included. We also serve as a sounding board for investments, long-term plans, and other issues we discuss on this website.
Family dashboard
We create a family operating system using Notion. Here’s an overview:
The dashboard becomes the app for the whole family. Everyone can see schedules, resources, documents, projects, contacts, and much more. It pays to take time to set this up at the beginning, so it can save you time later.
Transportation
We’ll manage the cars and driver and get you and your family where they need to be. We’ll be prepared with car seats, snacks, someone who goes with them to their classes or games, etc.
Personal assistant
We’ll provide a personal assistant. He or she will work for us using our systems. S/he will always be working on the next thing that needs to be done, not waiting around for instructions. We’ll have plenty of back-up so you’re always supported.
Household management
We’ll get the right people to take care of kids, make sure you get plenty of quality time with them, handle the details, and give you more free time to focus on yourself. We can manage multiple estates, wine collections, cars, boats and planes, and any other assets. We’ll make sure the gardening, cleaning, deliveries, and all the other duties are done the way you want them. You tell us once, and we make sure it’s done right each time.
Project and task management
In addition to a digital dashboard and remote work, we can take over many of the routine jobs and tasks you don’t want to do. We can give you 15 hours a week just by taking on the small stuff, getting it done, and checking it off. This could be paying bills, planning an event, getting food and wine delivered, shopping for a new insurance plan, travel logistics, getting computer systems set up, managing security, and much more.
Budgeting
We set up a household budget and key metrics for making sure everything is going according to plan. We plan for big expenses, taxes, cash calls, tuition, and everything else that needs to be under control. We monitor the budget and adjust as needed, using the principles of Beyond Budgeting. We want to give children an incentive and skills to make good choices with money.
Decision science
We’ll create a decision framework and track all our decisions together, so you can study your previous decisions and learn from them. Read our article on decision science to learn more.
Investing and asset management
In many marriages, the husband has and controls all the assets. The wife has no say in how things are managed, she just gets an allowance for spending. We want our clients to have their own money to invest and be more independent. We think that leads to a healthier relationship. We want our clients to have a team to help make family investment decisions and achieve financial objectives, so our clients are aware of what’s happening and have a say in how assets are managed.
Parenting
We want to help parents be better parents. We advocate an evidence-based approach to parenting, which means:
Don’t overprotect kids, that’s more dangerous in the long run
Don’t feed them a diet you read about online or in a book
Don’t go for most of the popular parenting tips
Don’t use popular medical sites and searches
Don’t teach them to read early, teach them to play
Don’t reward good behavior or say “good job” — kids will then do things for the reward
Minimize rules; maximize developing good judgment
Arrange as many play dates as possible
Love children unconditionally
Develop their intrinsic interests and motivations
Pursue their passions
Challenge them, do hard projects together as a family
Put them into a school that nurtures them as individuals
Build a curriculum of learning outside of school
Build critical-thinking skills
Cyber security
We want to keep you and your family safe from online attacks. There are many forms of attack and many weak points you need to strengthen. We can help you set up good password management, avoid scams, and prevent your devices from getting viruses and bots that can cause problems later. We also help you set healthy online guidelines for your kids and their use of technology.
If you are remembering or re-using your passwords, you are at risk. Call us immediately to help you get set up with a strong password-management system.
Research and critical thinking
Many people are looking for the new big thing: life extension, vitamins, cold plunge, fasting, low-carb, keto, electric vehicle, CBD products, gluten-free, vegan, non-GMO, grass-fed, BPA free, soy free, supplements, jaw exercises, and many more. We help separate fads from fact, white elephants from evidence, and system 1 from system 2. We can do research on our own and present the results, or we can work together to figure out what’s really going on.
We like to work with clients through Socratic dialogue, looking for the big picture, trying to find the signal in the noise. We try to stay up on the latest research in most fields. If you’re ready to learn, we’re ready to make the learning process fast and fun.
Health
As you can read elsewhere on this site, we want our clients to become strong, resilient, competitive athletes. It may not sound like you, you may not imagine yourself as an athlete, but it will give you 20 years’ more quality time with your kids later in life. You don’t want to be frail. You want to be an asset rather than a burden.
We’ll ask you to read Peter Attia’s book, Outlive, and then discuss a goal and a plan to get there. We’ll support you and hold you accountable every step of the way.
We also want you to understand that almost all diet research is wrong. There are no legitimate guidelines for diet today. Each person should come up with a sensible, evidence-based plan that works for her. Most recommendations for vitamins, supplements, “brain food,” healing foods, and “natural” foods are nonsense. Almost all recommendations for children’s diets are not scientifically based — kids can and do eat just about everything and most manage to do just fine.
As Michael Pollan says, “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” That may not work for everyone, but it’s about the level of detail we think is helpful in constructing a good diet. What works for one person doesn’t necessarily work for another. Most diets don’t work in the first place! Talk with us about how we can put together a good plan for eating and exercise that gives you a body everyone will be jealous of.
Mental health
We work with Sonia Limbada, an amazing coach who has worked with more than 100 divorced women. She’s very pro-active and wants to move clients from self-defeating feelings to feelings of accomplishment. She helps get rid of bad thoughts and habits and build a strong foundation for the future.
Interests and goals
We’d love to support you in accomplishing important things you care about. Whether it’s helping a nonprofit, joining a board, helping fundraise, or creating awareness around your personal issues, we want to help make you much more effective. Most philanthropy is designed to make donors feel good but has very little impact. How can you use your gifts to help others in the best way possible?
Do you want to start a new company? A social movement? Write a book? Create a nonprofit? Learn a new language? Start a school? Improve a hospital? Open a restaurant or a store? We’ve done most of these things and can help you achieve big goals.
Much of your future is unknown. We advocate doing small experiments and learning your way to creating the future you want. We don’t advocate big plans and projects. We like to take small steps, create many small wins, much learning, and keep reinforcing things that are working.
Instruction
We provide individual and group instruction for parents and kids on many topics, some of which are covered elsewhere on this site:
Professional: wealth management, economics, education, math, science, writing, screenwriting, podcasting, blogging, spreadsheets, organizing your life digitally using Notion, design, collecting art, critical thinking, the scientific method, starting a new business, starting a nonprofit, impact investing, portfolio construction, and more.
Personal: homeschooling, critical thinking, tennis, skiing, weight lifting, running, fitness, cycling, climbing, skating, and many other activities.
We can find you great instructors wherever you are.
We also work on teen issues: see our web page on teens.
Classes
We teach online classes for individuals and groups. See our blog post for details. Here is an outline:
1. Build your online personal brain/vault/organizer
2. The future of work
3. Thinking in Bets - using betting to make more accurate predictions and understand the world better
4. Humans and the natural world (critical thinking about environmental issues)
5. Human reproductive biology and associated activities
Hard projects
Again, this may not be on your top-ten list, but we believe families should do hard projects together. Kids don’t remember the day-to-day, but they do remember the big events. As an example, learn about our trip to Africa, which involves everyone climbing Mt Kilimanjaro and then going on safari. The climb is important, because it gets everyone practicing, working, and preparing together for months and months before the event. We believe it’s better to combine vacations with purposeful adventures that have meaning and require learning and training beforehand. These are far more memorable than going to a resort and playing tennis and golf.
Emotional and relationship support
We have fantastic relationship coaches who will patiently listen and work with you to make yourself stronger, more resilient, and unbreakable. You’re not going to change the grownups in your life. Better to understand what you can change and focus on getting the results you want. We will support those goals every step of the way.
Decisionmaking
We make frequent use of decision science. You can learn more about that on this website. We want to train our clients to become better decisionmakers. We’ll work with you to learn framing, research, options, evaluation, decision quality, and how to manage tradeoffs. For those interested, we’ll train you in cost/benefit analysis. In some cases where much is at stake, we’ll do most of the work. We’ll keep track of our decisions and review them at the end of the year to see how we can improve.
Legacy
What will you leave behind? How will your children manage? Most wealthy families do a poor job of governance and long-term wealth management. Most parents spoil their kids, which means they have few skills for their future. Most parents leave their money in trusts that are tax-efficient but not beneficial for the family long-term. Most wealth evaporates over 20 years or so. These are serious issues that most families don’t pay enough attention to.
Keep your family together
We’ve seen some really terrible divorces. We don’t want you to be one of them. Whatever your challenges, we want to keep you strong, independent, and happily married. Things come up all the time. You can’t predict where you’ll be a year from now. With us behind you, you’ll be stronger, more independent, a better parent, and a better partner. Call us to discuss how we can be your team in winning the game of life.
Criminals like Emmanuel Weyi should be caught and prosecuted.