StoryLens Podcast

Allen Arnold has spent the last fifteen years as Executive Producer of Content with Wild at Heart, the ministry founded by John Eldredge. Prior to that, he was the publisher of more than 500 novels in the decade. He is the author of The Eden Option (the book that gave StoryOne its name), The Creativity Glitch, and four other acclaimed books. Most families who love God are doing a great deal FOR God. Far fewer, however, are doing any of it WITH Him. That is the distinction between Story One, the story God intends for your family, and Story Two, the life built on the culture's terms with God set aside. The difference isn't trivial. It is revealed in our view of risk, how capital is deployed or buried, if we are creating a future that has deep roots by making what matters and creating a legacy for our future generations, and whether a family's charitable giving is just a line item or a joyful participation in something God is already doing. In this faith at work conversation, AllenArnold, John Christensen, and Cameron Bond sharpen the framework the StoryLens podcast has carried since Episode 2. That is, knowing which story a family is living in isn't a matter of guessing but of looking honestly at what the family keeps choosing.

Pat Trysla has been doing deals for forty years, the first stretch as a mergers and acquisitions attorney and the last twenty-two as founder and CEO of Frontier Investment Banking. His firm is referral only. Its clients have run as large as $75 million EBITDA, and one of them sold to a Berkshire Hathaway company last year. In this conversation with John Christensen, JD, CFP®, and Cameron Bond, CFP®, Pat describes what a competitive process actually looks like at that scale. On one recent recapitalization his firm took the company to more than 1,500 potential buyers, drew roughly 200 interested parties and over 75 offers, and worked the field down to three finalists. He also walks through arithmetic most owners have never seen: a $100 million valuation, an 80/20 structure, $80 million to the owner at closing, and, because of leverage and tax-deferred rollover treatment, 30 to 35 percent of the go-forward company still owned by the family. For a family whose net worth sits almost entirely inside one operating business, that arithmetic is the center of the conversation because a sale does not simply convert a company into cash. It permanently restructures the family balance sheet, resets who owns what across generations, and closes a set of planning options that cannot be reopened once a letter of intent is signed. The through-line is that LOI signature. Before it, nearly everything is still available: price, terms, structure, how the family holds ownership, and what has been committed to charity. After it, though, the list of what can be changed is short.

For many families, success creates new challenges. The systems, relationships, and decision-making processes that help build wealth are often not the same systems required to steward it. What begins as a business, a portfolio, or a collection of successful investments eventually becomes something more complex, requiring coordination across entities, advisors, generations, and increasingly diverse family interests. In this episode, John Christensen, JD, CFP®, and Cameron Bond, CFP®, sit down with family office attorney Taylor Smith to explore one of the most misunderstood concepts in the wealth management industry: the family office. The conversation examines the purpose behind family office structures, the differences between single-family and multi-family offices, and the governance challenges that emerge as wealth grows. Taylor explains how family offices serve as the strategic center of complex family enterprises, coordinating assets, advisors, trusts, tax planning, charitable giving, and family decision-making across generations. The discussion also explores a reality many successful multi-generational families eventually encounter: preserving wealth is often easier than preparing the people who will eventually inherit it. As complexity increases, governance, communication, education, and alignment become just as important as investment returns and tax planning. This episode is for founders, business owners, and families of multi-generational wealth who are beginning to recognize that accumulation is only one phase of the journey. The next challenge is building structures that can support the family, the enterprise, and the relationships that connect them for generations to come. You can connect with Taylor directly at [email protected] or find her on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/taylorsmithtax/.

For families of multi-generational wealth, estate planning rarely fails because the documents are wrong. There are in essence three levels of estate planning, which are defined and determined by the wealth or future wealth of an individual or family. The generally accepted levels of wealth that determine the type of estate plan are: 1) those with a net worth comfortably below the estate, gift, and generation-skipping transfer (GST) tax exemptions ($0 to $10 million), 2) those with a net worth approaching the estate, gift, and generation-skipping transfer (GST) tax exemption ($10 million), and 3) those with a net worth greater than the estate, gift, and GST tax exemptions (over $15 million for an individual and over $30 million for a couple). For each level of wealth, an irrevocable trust can be a beneficial structure, which has a multitude of benefits. Whether a trust is revocable or irrevocable can be confusing and misunderstood. In this episode, John Christensen, JD, CFP®, and Cameron Bond, CFP®, sit down with Erin Anderson, an estate and tax planning attorney at Kembell Woods & Martinsen, to unpack how these structures can be so powerful and beneficial. The conversation covers grantor trust taxation, intentionally defective grantor trusts (IDGTs), valuation discounts on closely held business interests, generation-skipping structures, and the governance risks that emerge when trust design and business succession planning are treated as separate conversations. This episode is for founders managing pre-liquidity planning, trustees navigating distribution decisions, and rising-generation family members who are beginning to understand the architecture of what they will eventually steward.

Succession planning is often treated as a technical process, but for many leaders and families, the real challenge begins after the plan is in place. In this episode of the StoryLens Podcast, the StoryOne team sits down with Dan Deeble of Lost Ball Consulting to explore the deeper realities of leadership transition, business exit, and life after a liquidity event. The conversation focuses on the shift from building something for yourself to investing in others, and why identity, purpose, and family dynamics ultimately determine whether succession leads to continuity or disorientation. For founders, family enterprises, and family offices navigating transition, this episode highlights why clarity of purpose is essential to making any succession plan actually work. You can connect with Dan on LinkedIn or reach out to him directly at [email protected]

Most families of multi-generational wealth and most business owners believe they have the right team around them. And in many cases, they're right, for where they were ten years ago. The financial advisor who built the investment framework, the estate attorney who drafted the plan, the CPA who has handled the returns since the business was half this size, they all did real work. The question isn't whether that team served you then. The question is whether it's built for what you've become and where you're headed. Every profession has tiers. The CPA who is excellent at $3M of business income may not be the CPA who lives inside the $30M business structures with multi-entity planning and generational transfer. The estate attorney who does a great job for the $1M family may not be the attorney who has spent a career inside complex business succession and dynasty trust design. The financial advisor who built a solid practice may be working on commission, recommending products, and operating without a fiduciary obligation to the family. None of these are moral failures. They are specialization gaps, and the family that crossed the threshold years ago but never updated the team is the one bearing the cost.In this episode, the StoryOne team sits down with attorney Taylor Smith to examine one of the most structurally predictable and least-discussed failures in wealth management: the individual or business owner that has outgrown its current advisory structure, but the financial advisor, CPA, and estate attorney haven't said so. The conversation covers what those gaps actually look like, why nobody surfaces them, and what families at the $30M to $100M+ level should be asking but almost never do.

Many founders and families of multi-generational wealth reach a point where the financial architecture is in place, but something is still not working. Not broken. Not in crisis. Just misaligned in ways that don't show up on a balance sheet and that nobody can quite name in the boardroom or the family meeting. In this episode, Dan Deeble introduces the concept of the "lost ball" (something you own but no longer possess) and applies it to the leadership and family dynamics that drive governance risk inside complex family enterprises. The conversation covers how financial success masks misalignment, why the self-awareness gap is the most underestimated continuity risk for multi-generational wealth, and how moving from "nice" to honest communication can change the trajectory of family governance. For families navigating succession, rising-generation preparedness, and the structural costs of avoided conversations, this episode names what most financial planning frameworks never address, and offers a path for closing the gap. You can connect with Dan on LinkedIn or reach out to him directly at [email protected]

Families of multi-generational wealth and family businesses operate within systems that shape behavior, roles, and decision-making across generations, often without anyone mapping these unseen relational forces. According to J.P. Morgan Private Bank's 2026 Global Family Office Report, a survey of 333 single family offices across 30 countries with an average net worth of $1.6 billion, 86% of family offices lack a clear succession plan for key decision makers, and 41% of business-owning families rank internal family conflict as a top-three continuity risk, nearly double the rate of non-business-owning peers. With $124 trillion in generational wealth expected to transfer by 2048, it's the relational infrastructure of the family and not the legal or financial architecture, that most commonly causes succession to break down. In this episode, the StoryOne team continues their conversation with Ken Howard to explore how those dynamics form, how they can become succession risks, and what it takes to change them before they do. Ken shares practical insights into identifying structural risks within relationships navigating resistance to change in business-owning families, and introducing healthier patterns that hold. Sources: J.P. Morgan Private Bank, 2026 Global Family Office Report; The Wall Street Journal (Ensign, March 24, 2026). If you'd like to connect with Ken, you can reach him directly at: [email protected]

Families bound by shared wealth, shared businesses, or shared estates often cannot simply walk away from fractured relationships. The stakes are too high, the entanglements too deep. And yet most of those families never develop the relational skills to navigate disagreement without causing lasting damage.

In this episode of the StoryLens Podcast, John Christensen and Cameron Bond sit down with Marriage and Family Therapist, Ken Howard, to examine a distinction that changes how families handle conflict: the difference between conflict and combat. Ken draws on decades of clinical experience to explain why unresolved wounds accumulate into systemic fractures, what it actually takes to rebuild trust after it has been broken, and why humility is the single most consequential variable for high achievers who want healthier relationships.

If you'd like to connect with Ken, you can reach him directly at: [email protected]

In this episode of the StoryLens Podcast, the StoryOne team and Evan Lange dive into the strategic side of charitable planning with a focus on presale charitable gifts. They explain the importance of timing, asset selection, and charitable entities can significantly reduce taxes while increasing impact. The conversation equips families and business owners with practical insight to approach generosity before major liquidity events.