How to Build Your Family’s Legacy: Cultivating Generational Wealth

While many of us strive to achieve personal success, we also hope to leave a legacy for the next generation. Many things can make up a legacy: cherished traditions, strong values, and perhaps most tangibly, financial stability. After all, as a form of sustainable financial well-being passed down through family members, generational wealth empowers your descendants and prepares them for success.

But where should you begin? Is there a way to make this aspiration a reality for your family?

To help answer these questions is Rich Christiansen.

In addition to technology, SEO, imports/exports, real estate, online sales, innovative products, and lead generation, Rich has founded 52 companies. Furthermore, he is the co-author of Bootstrap Business: A Step-by-Step Business Survival Guide and the author of The Zigzag Principle, a bestselling book. With his sons, Alex and Tim, he co-authored a book called Even if Your Toes Turn Purple: Raising Confident, Happy, and Stand Out.

In addition to teaching people about creating a life of abundance, Rich is committed to prioritizing time for his family. Maybe that’s why each of his five children founded a million-dollar company before finishing high school.

Here are his tips on leading families to wealth, happiness, and lasting relationships.

Family and relationships are everything.

I love this quote from Charles Kuralt, “The love of family and the admiration of friends are much more important than wealth and privilege.”

Strong relationships are fundamental to human well-being. Their love, support, and sense of belonging are unlike anything else in the world.

This being said, here are some of the reasons why family and close relationships are so irreplaceable:

• Boosts your self-esteem and confidence. You can take risks and achieve your goals knowing you have people who care about you unconditionally.
• Provides emotional support. Family and friends can be a source of comfort and joy during tough times.
• Reduces stress. A strong social network can help buffer the adverse effects of stress and improve your health in general.
• Shared history and experiences. We often share a history with our families and friends, which creates strong bonds, traditions, and values.
• Teaches you important life skills. Our families teach us how to communicate, resolve conflicts, and empathize.
• Different perspectives. We can grow and learn by providing us with different perspectives on life.

Rich’s conversation with Dr. Horn, one of his mentors, led him to discover this. In fact, Rich says this marked a turning point in his life. Before that, his pursuit of material possessions and success had consumed him. As a result of Dr. Horn’s insights, he began to value relationships, particularly those with his family. As a result of this new perspective, he avoided sacrificing his health, trust, or family to achieve fleeting goals.

Invest in small businesses with big capitalizations.

“I think as you’re looking at yourself as an entrepreneur and a business person, you’ve got to very carefully understand what my skill is, where I translate, and where I do not,” Rich says. “In my instance, I know I could have made a lot more money than I did.”

As a businessman, Rich excelled at growing companies that reached $10 million to $15 million in revenue. Eventually, he became bored with this approach. Instead, he emphasizes the importance of understanding your niche and pursuing ventures that align with your interests and skills.

Your risk tolerance should also be considered. Because of potential hidden problems, Rich finds buying existing businesses scary. He is more comfortable with small losses ($5,000 or $10,000) but is hesitant to risk a large amount on an uncertain business.

Using a “lean startup” approach, he focuses on rapid iteration and experimentation. The priority is the quantity of attempts (“at bats”) rather than guaranteed success (“getting wood on the bat”).

Rich utilizes “guardrails” to manage risk, including factors like time commitment (3 months), workload (15 hours per week), and financial investment.

For Rich, relationship capital is the most important guardrail. Knowing that some ventures will fail, he avoids involving the same core network in every project. His strategy is to select individuals who are either more tolerant of potential failures or have a lesser impact on their overall network. Having this protective wall around his relationships protects them from entrepreneurship’s inevitable ups and downs.

The importance of raising self-sufficient and non-entitled children.

One of Rich’s most significant achievements was helping his five sons become multimillionaires by instilling an entrepreneurial spirit.

While he admits that his family’s privileged position contributed to his son’s success, Rich also emphasizes the importance of family and trust. Among his primary concerns was avoiding raising entitled children, a trend they observed frequently among wealthy families.

Based on his own upbringing and limited resources, Rich searched for a model that fostered a strong work ethic and a strong value system. He calls these rites of passage.

The first one was titled Trust and Open Communication Even in Life’s Challenges: Honesty, Openness, and Building a Family on Trust. He explains that as a child ages, his skull closes, the pineal gland self-regulates, and kids become self-governed.

At the age of eight, he and his wife would take each of their sons out to dinner. Their sons could pick the first place to eat dinner. They could take each son somewhere else to talk openly and honestly about sex, drugs, bowling, and technology, and their brain opened an open dialog that most parents never even attempt. Many parents wait until their children are 14 or 15 to open, which is too late.

As a result, eight becomes the eight to be honest, open, deliberate, and transparent in communication. The age of 12 was a rite of passage.

During this rite of passage, Rick went on a 3-week trip with each of his sons. The first week would be spent bonding and having fun. In addition, they visited orphanages in Kathmandu, Nepal, where like 100,000 little girls were rescued every year from dowry sales that turned into sexual slavery or murder. Their organs were sold to China and India for profit.

This is what Rich refers to as the non-entitlement trip. More importantly, they reach the point of self-accountability and taking charge of their future.

Developing entrepreneurial skills in children.

Following this rite of passage, Rich helped them establish their own business. Since all three of the oldest businesses built million-dollar companies and the fourth and fifth had done it so many times, they asked for different objectives, and that’s how Toes Turn Purple came about.

Once we were 18, however, they shut down the business and donated the extra money to charity. At that point, they lived modestly and poorly and served humanity deeply for two years.

At its core, entrepreneurship isn’t just about starting a business; it’s also an attitude kids can apply to all aspects of their lives. To nurture your child’s spirit, follow these steps:

• Creativity and problem-solving. Give them the freedom to think outside of the box. They can, for example, brainstorm solutions to problems, no matter how big or small. As a result, they learn how to think outside of the box.
• Embrace risk-taking. Entrepreneurs are known for taking calculated risks. You can encourage this by offering opportunities to try new things, such as participating in a science fair or starting a lemonade stand.
• See opportunities. Encourage your child to identify needs or problems in the world around them. For example, a messy room needs a better organization system, or an age-specific after-school activity is lacking.
• Let them take the lead. Ensure that your child has the opportunity to make decisions and take responsibility for projects at an appropriate age. Planning a family outing or managing allowance can all be part of this responsibility.
• Financial literacy. Help them understand the value of money, the importance of saving, and the need to spend responsibly. Setting goals, tracking allowances, or even starting a small business together can help them succeed.
• Celebrate mistakes. Failure is a necessary part of learning. Whenever your child experiences a setback, help him or her see it as an opportunity to learn and grow. Overcoming challenges requires effort and resilience.

Create a legacy that cannot be shaken.

“You know, we get values in our business, but most people don’t think to put it in their family and for heaven’s sake, even harder, they don’t have a clue in the world what their personal values are,” Rich says. “And if we don’t get our personal values and particularly our family values in alignment, then how do we expect anything to be but a hot mess?”

As a result, Rich has focused on how we can align our personal, family, business, and wealth-investing values. Using his Legado program, families identify what they value and what needs to be thrown away and plant these four pillars on top. The first is symbology, which is so crucial to determining your tribe. Next, we have doctrine or governance or rules. Thirdly, there are customs and traditions that allow you to feel safe returning home and enacting them. As we already discussed, the fourth is about rites of passage.

“Then and only then can you put the platform to hold the weight on top, which is the family constitution, the will, the trust, and then you know and understand how to pass things on generationally,” Rich states.

The following are some other ways you can leave a lasting legacy:

• Leave the world better than you found it. Keep your focus on making a lasting impact, such as developing a product that solves a problem or advocating for a cause you believe in. There is a ripple effect that can improve lives for generations to come as a result of these contributions.
• Inspire and uplift others. Through your art or mentorship, strive to create something with that power for others.
• Nurture connection and love. Invest in your family, develop deep friendships, and leave the world knowing that connection is important. A ripple of love and community can have a lasting effect.
• Share your knowledge and wisdom. Your experience and knowledge can be passed through mentoring, teaching, or writing. As a result, your ideas have a chance to evolve for future generations.
• Live a life of integrity. Your character is your legacy. When you earn respect through honesty, compassion, and courage, you leave a lasting impression. When people remember your values, it’s a testament to the quality of your life.

You don’t need grand gestures to leave a legacy. In other words, it is about your daily choices and their impact on those around you. Make a point of focusing on what matters to you, and leave the world a little brighter for having been in it.

Strengthen your family bond with traditions.

“What I really want to pass on to my children and grandchildren has nothing to do with the dollar bills,” says Rich. Instead, he wants to pass along the values and wisdom he has gained over the years.

It may vary from family to family, but here are some tips to consider:

• Create a sense of belonging and security. Traditions provide predictability and comfort, especially for children. As a result, they feel a sense of belonging and stability.
• Celebrate shared values and heritage. Connecting your family to its culture and history through its traditions is possible. These rituals pass on values and stories to future generations, regardless of whether it’s a religious holiday or a family recipe.
• Shared memories. Family traditions are like building blocks for the history of a family. When you celebrate a tradition together, you create a new memory that strengthens your relationship.
• Bring everyone together. Even when life gets busy, tradition makes it important to find time for family. As a result, they provide a dedicated space for conversations, laughter, and creating happy memories with family and friends.

To make traditions fun and meaningful, everyone has to feel invested. Making your family members feel valued is the best way to brainstorm and plan new traditions.