Money Tales

In this episode of Money Tales, our guest is Dr. Michele Mikeska Jaffe. Michele comes from a family of hard workers. Hard work was a sacrifice that you did for others, money was the fruit of that work and displaying wealth was taboo. These messages stuck with Michele through her early adulthood. When she was in her late twenties Michele discovered that she could actually enjoy the money she was making. This ah-hah resulted from her love of travel. She realized at that time that her income afforded her the ability to explore the world. Michele became comfortable using money for things that could be deemed frivolous or luxurious but, to her, were highly enjoyable. At that same time, she says this pivot felt almost like a betrayal to her family. She went to Greece anyway and had wonderful vacation. It was this individuation that caused her to form her own perspectives about money.

Michele specializes in supporting individuals, couples, and business families with the impact of wealth on their identity and relationships. After years of working as entrepreneur and a design director in innovation consulting, the extensive experience Michele gained in creative, conceptual solutions and strategic engagement is now informing her work as a relationship and wealth psychologist.

Michele’s doctoral research brought her in touch with the core issues that affect financially diverse marriages and family systems. She is the Executive Director of The Family Business Network – USA, a peer-to-peer member association spanning 65 countries that brings together over 4,000 business families. Michele has been a featured speaker and content creator, as well as featured in peer-reviewed journals.

On a personal note, Michele is a yoga, music, and nature lover. She’s a fierce proponent of good food, good design, and good company. She’s pretty competitive in a family card game and loves an interior design magazine. Michele lives with her husband and two daughters in Berkeley, CA. Her website is www.drmichelemikeskajaffe.com

In this episode of Money Tales, our guest is Cindy Arledge. When Cindy’s parents died, they left behind a complicated estate. Cindy says there was 17 trusts that co-owned four pieces of commercial real estate and the beneficiaries spanned multiple family members. Cindy was determined to realize her parents’ legacy and see her daughters receive the property that her parents wanted them to have. Other family members felt differently, so Cindy ended up buying out all of her nieces and nephews to settle the estate. This cost millions of dollars. Cindy borrowed against the real estate to make things work. For over 15 years, Cindy and her husband have carried substantial debt to be able to give her daughters their inheritance. Ironically, today, her girls aren’t interested in the real estate. This made Cindy put her ego aside and understand it's not about what she wants or what her parents wanted. It's about what her daughters want. Real legacy isn’t property or assets, it’s empowering each generation to be able to identify their gifts and talents so they can use them in a way that benefits the world.

Cindy brings a fresh new approach to an age-old problem: how to transfer wealth without destroying your beneficiaries’ ambition and drive, and their relationships to each other. Motivated by the most painful experience of her life – losing a relationship with one of her brothers over the shared inheritance – Cindy developed a process to help business owners preserve family relationships through emotional and financial storms.

While in the waiting room, the time between her parent’s death and the distribution of their estate, Cindy sought to understand what had happened to her family. In the process, she discovered a growing number of wealthy families who know how to retain wealth for 100 years, and longer. She was dismayed to discover that 7 out of 10 families lose wealth during the first transfer, and less than 10% retain wealth past the third generation. Shockingly, 97% of the time wealth loss was caused by the family. In other words, wealth loss is code word for family feud.

By reverse engineering the root cause, Cindy built a framework that is both common sense and practical to apply. Cindy calls this process Legacy Planning. Utilizing a lifetime of learning, Cindy crafted a systematic approach that includes aspects of spirituality, personal development, psychology, leadership training, financial literacy, and conscious capitalism.

Cindy holds an MBA and is a second-generation commercial real estate investment entrepreneur, best-selling author and matriarch of the family. Her vision is to see legacy planning become a recognized industry and help at least one million families create a Legacy Plan.

Cindy’s favorite role is that of grandmother, or “Elmo.” She enjoys each day as a gift with her husband, Gerald and their four-legged family members. They live in the DFW metroplex where they enjoy time spent with family and friends.

In this episode of Money Tales, our guest is Aubrey Johnson. As a young person, Aubrey had insecurities that extended into adulthood. As he tells us he felt greed and craving for acceptance which led to comparative thinking--- wondering how he measured up to the next person. This line of thinking was toxic and didn’t allow Aubrey to think for himself. It also played out in his money decisions. Aubrey shares that he often found himself comparing his finances, where he lived and the car he drove to his peers. Meeting his now wife changed Aubrey’s trajectory. He tells us that she helped him learn the importance of thinking for yourself and marching by the beat of your own drum.

Today, among other things, Aubrey is host of the Road to Rediscovery podcast. He believes every person has a story to tell. Some stories serve to entertain, others to teach. Aubrey first conceptualized The Road to Rediscovery to provide a platform for ordinary yet

extraordinary people to share their stories in the hopes of helping others who may be suffering through dark times of their own.

Stories allow people to relate to one another and the act of sharing these words, thoughts and ideas is a gift. Aubrey feels it’s an honor to be alongside his guests as they tap into incredible wells of inner strength to share their stories with others.

Above all, Aubrey wants his listeners and guests to know they’re not alone. By walking this road together, we are all stronger.

Aubrey is originally from Cincinnati, Ohio, and currently lives in North Dallas, Texas.

In this episode of Money Tales, our guest is Barbara Sloan. Barbara experienced homelessness at times between the ages of 15 and 19. She thought about money a lot during that period and reflects that one of the amazing things her dad instilled in her was a strong work ethic. Barbara often had two or three jobs going at once. She was always working and, though she never had a plan, she knew that she was able to provide for herself. Barbara ultimately made her way to the service industry, which opened her eyes to all sorts of new money opportunities and considerations.

Barbara is the author of the book Tipped: The life changing guide to financial freedom for waitresses, bartenders, strippers, and all other service industry professionals. A homeless teen who danced for dollars and definitely did not graduate from college, Barbara is now a money coach that spent two decades working in every imaginable position in the Service Industry all over the country. In addition to owning and running a badass women-owned Construction company in the heart of Manhattan, she helps Tipped workers achieve Financial Freedom, like she did. She is passionate about all of the amazing aspects of Tipped work and passionate about all of the terrible aspects of Tipped work.

Barbara lives in New York City with her wife of 10 years, an esteemed corporate finance exec, and together they are a couple of adorable money nerds who point out every dog they see.

In this episode of Money Tales, our guest is Tiffany Schade. Tiffany started her career in corporate America and then shifted to becoming a wife and mother. She really threw herself into those roles, and at a certain point during her marriage, Tiffany realized it was her responsibility to get more involved with the family finances. As she tells us, she worked on both her self-confidence and financial confidence. That helped Tiffany achieve the clarity she was looking for, which led to her launching her own business and deciding to leave the marriage.

Tiffany is the founder and CEO of Sacred Child Beauty and is bringing benevolence to the beauty industry as a change-maker of cosmetics. Her line of clean, non-toxic, cruelty-free, and highly pigmented products is suited for people of all identities to look and feel their best.

Tiffany’s passion for pigment and craft started at a very young age, which brought her to U.C. Berkeley where she studied fine art and developed a unique eye for form. From there, she launched a career working with some of the globe’s largest and most successful cosmetics companies like Sephora and Estee Lauder. The experience enabled her to gain perspective and realize what was missing from the industry: a clean line of cosmetics that perform.

A wearer of many hats, Tiffany sought to combine her background as a certified holistic health coach with her love of lipstick and all things luscious. She formulated five core products and seven lipstick shades with customer health and welfare at the forefront.

As someone with sensitive skin and very high standards, Tiffany stays involved in every step of the process, from formulation to finished packaging, to ensure each product lives up to its full potential. There’s a transparency about her products and the way she does business that sets her apart from others in the industry. Her extensive knowledge about what people look for in cosmetics led to the birth of Sacred Child Beauty and a growing team of dedicated employees who believe in her mission and share her passion for the company.

A Sacred Child is a gift from the cosmos, linking the sky, the earth, and everything in between in a celestial loop of life and love. Just as the name implies, Tiffany’s goal is to bring quality cosmetics, inclusivity, and healthy, intentional living to the beauty-sphere. Coined “a company with a conscience,” Sacred Child Beauty will make its mark on the world (without leaving a blemish on the earth) thanks to its doting, yet daring mother, Tiffany Schade.

In this episode of Money Tales, our guest is Lloyd Greif. After a decade-long investment banking career at Sutro & Co. Incorporated, Lloyd left to start his own boutique investment bank, Greif & Co. Some people would be skittish to make this leap. Not Lloyd. As he tells us, he was a top producer firm wide, and as the leading rainmaker within the organization, he was routinely generating 40% to 60% of the total revenue for their division. Lloyd had the relationships, contacts and chutzpah to know that that success he had at Sutro would carry over, even if he was starting Greif & Co. during a recession. Lloyd’s extreme work ethic is legendary, and he had no doubts that he would pull off the new venture.

Lloyd is a highly accomplished investment banker of four decades’ standing. The fact that he routinely lectures on negotiations at all three of his alma maters – UCLA, USC and Loyola – speaks to his knowledge and expertise. He exclusively represents entrepreneurially owned and operated middle market companies, hence Greif & Co.’s reputation as “The Entrepreneur’s Investment Bank.” Lloyd is a zealot for his clients, always putting their interests first, religiously avoiding conflicts of interest, and going to the mat for them. He is also renowned for getting tough, extremely complex deals done no matter the obstacles. A proven successful economic cycle rider, Lloyd founded his eponymous firm during the recession of the early 1990s and has persevered through three other economic downturns.

The son of Holocaust survivors, Lloyd grew up in a one-bedroom apartment that he shared with his mother and older brother. Lloyd worked full-time to pay his way through school, earning three degrees—in Economics (BA―UCLA), Entrepreneurship (MBA―USC, Beta Gamma Sigma), and Law (JD―Loyola Law School, Order of the Coif). Running the midnight-to-9am store stocking crew at Ralphs Grocery Co. before going to school was not an infrequent occurrence for him. Lloyd founded Greif & Co. in 1992 following a successful, decade-long investment banking career as Vice Chairman of Sutro & Co., the oldest investment banking firm in the West, where he was head of the investment banking division and a member of the five-person Management Committee that ran the firm. Previously, Lloyd was a business operations and strategy consultant with Touche, Ross & Co. (Deloitte Consulting LLC).

In 1997, Lloyd founded the Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at USC’s Marshall School of Business. The Greif Entrepreneurship Center is consistently ranked among the top 10 entrepreneurial studies centers in the world. Lloyd is past chair of the Board of Directors of the Los Angeles Economic Development Corporation and the Los Angeles Police Foundation, a member of the Board of Directors of the California Chamber of Commerce, a member of the Board of Leaders of the USC Marshall School of Business, a member of both the Young Presidents’ Organization (YPO) and World Presidents’ Organization (WPO), a member of the Board of Overseers of Loyola Law School, past member of the Board of Trustees and Treasurer of the Florence Academy of Art, and a member of the Board of Advisors of the National Museum of American Illustration.

In 2002, Lloyd received the Entrepreneurial Spirit Award from the Boy Scouts of America, in 2000 received the Corporate Excellence Award from Loyola Law School, in 1999 and 2012 received commendations from the City of Los Angeles for his “dedication and outstanding contributions to the Los Angeles community,” and in 2019 received the Alumni Service Award from the University of Southern California. A frequent public speaker, he is an internationally recognized authority in the field of mergers & acquisitions and corporate finance and has been featured in such books as The Entrepreneurial Journey, Strategies for Small Business Success, The Entrepreneurship Movement and the University, Loyola Law School: A Sense of Purpose and A Sense of Mission, and The Development of University-Based Entrepreneurship Ecosystems. Lloyd also served as technical advisor for the novel The Street and has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Business Week, Forbes, Fortune, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and the Financial Times. He is admitted to practice law in the State of California.

In this episode of Money Tales, our guest is Olivia Summerhill. Olivia grew up in an ultra-high net worth family. She says they were very privileged and had everything they ever wanted: extracurricular activities, private tutors, private school, and big family gatherings at fancy resorts were the norm. From the outside it all looked perfect. However, Olivia tells us that when she was young, the family’s large custom home in the gated community was the façade of perfectionism. The family was keeping her parents’ impending divorce a secret inside the house. This is when Olivia witnessed money being used to exert power and control and she witnessed the devastation and emotions of both of her parents. This experience shaped Olivia’s purpose and the career choices she’s made.

Olivia is the founder of a financial consulting company, The Summerhill Firm, helping affluent women maintain their lifestyles and thrive post-divorce by educating and empowering them financially.

Having over a decade of experience in wealth management and private banking, Olivia dedicates her time to protecting women. Her niche serves famous and high-profile women who need help navigating the financial complexities of divorce. She also consults with financial advisors and family offices to help their clients avoid divorce mistakes. Olivia is often highlighted in Forbes, US News, MSN, and other national media. She hosts a money coaching podcast called 'Divorce for Wealthy Women.' Among numerous other designations in finance, Olivia is a Certified Financial Planner, Certified Divorce Financial Analyst, Certified Divorce Specialist, and Certified Money Coach.

In this episode of Money Tales, our guest is Dann Van Der Vliet. Dann is the Executive Director of the John and Dyan Smith Family Business Initiative (SFBI) at Cornell University. Dann tells us that in 2009 when his mom died, she had a condo, a used car and a few thousand dollars, but she didn’t have a will. Dann goes on to share that his older brother felt like he had done more to help their mom and, therefore, deserved her leftover resources as a result. This caused a rift in the family, and the two stopped talking. Dann knew the break with his brother was about the relationship and not about the money.

Dann is a 2010 graduate of the Master of Education Interdisciplinary Studies program at the University of Vermont (UVM) and a 2001 graduate of the University of Vermont with a B.S. in Natural Resources. As the founding director of the SFBI, Dann has guided the launch and growth of one of the leading educational centers for family business. He designed and developed the Leaders in Family Enterprise course, and teaches executives and next generation leaders through the SFBI’s professional development programs.

As Director of The Family Business Initiative at UVM from 2003 through 2014, Dann worked with owners and their successors to find solutions that worked for both family and business. In January of 2013, he was part of the team that launched and funded first ever Global Family Enterprise Case Competition with 16 teams from nine countries. Dann is a member of the Collaboration for Family Flourishing, an Editor for familybusiness.org, the leading online resource for family business knowledge, and serves on the Board of Directors for the Green Mountain Club.

In this episode of Money Tales, our guest is Jaclynn (Jax) Brennan. Jax has been on both sides of the wealth spectrum. When she was young, Jax’s family went from having wealth to having nothing. She says this experience has allowed her to be comfortable taking incredible risks and leaps as a founder of a growing business. If her entrepreneurial endeavors don’t work out, Jax has the confidence of knowing that she could always fall back on her talents and get a corporate job. Meanwhile, as an entrepreneur she’s scrappy, tenacious, and knows how to stretch a dollar to maximize opportunities.

Jax is a creative executive and expert on the connection between business and branding. With over 12 years of experience as a Creative Director for a variety of luxury fashion brands and having helped lead over 22 major corporations in executing branding strategies, she is an authority on taking brands, organizations, and entrepreneurs to the next level of success.

Jax is also the CEO and Co-Founder of Fyli, a female mastermind membership community focused on educational masterclasses, accountability, peer-to-peer mentorship, leadership advancement, and funding opportunities for early-stage female founders. At Fyli, she oversees all corporate partnerships, including Soho House and Bumble, investor relations, curriculum structure, and team culture.

Having coined the term “creative duality”, which explores the strategies and new frontiers of branding using conceptual thinking for multiple categories in the fashion, photography, sports, art, medical, real estate, and consumer goods industries. Jax has used this method to design Serena William’s first jewelry collection. She has also used it to launch multiple ready-to-wear collaborations with Lord & Taylor and Bloomingdales, and executive produce the documentary series, “Connecting Thread” for Refinery29.

Jax’s initiatives are authentic, approachable, and meant for everyone - women; men who are supportive of women; female entrepreneurs; women who are starting their career; new mothers who may feel left out in their careers; women who are interested in fashion, lifestyle, beauty, travel, health and wellness; anyone who needs hope, inspiration, support.

Learn more at https://jaclynnbrennan.com/ and https://fylitribe.com/