Independent Pieces Become a Thriving Collective
As family enterprises experience increasing growth, these businesses often use their free cash flow to accumulate assets and expand business interests and partnership investments. While this growth signals success, it also invites chaos into a family’s ownership structure. In turn, these challenges can threaten long-term wealth preservation, enterprise growth and family cohesion.
i3 Private Client Group, an i3 Global Enterprise, works with families to mitigate these challenges by establishing a well-developed Family Ecosystem.
The i3 Family Ecosystem is a process, or mapping system, if you will, designed to bring Control (relational, family governance) and Economics (financial planning and analysis, accounting, and, when needed, asset management) into a symbiotic relationship to serve the family enterprise.
We like the word “ecosystem” because it's designed to do the one thing families in business need above all else: Take independent entities and informational resources — family data, behavioral data, legal and business documentation, reporting and accounting, for instance — and harmonize each into a single, thriving collective.
Yet, an ecosystem’s effectiveness relies on an understanding of what must live and thrive within that system. That brings us to the information piece of the three “i’s” in i3. It’s not flashy. But it is critical.
After working with families in business for decades, we’ve learned that many family enterprises accumulate “filing cabinet assets.” And, often, these assets are now worth a lot of money. Everything we do as firm is built around this first step: Uncovering the history and operating details of an enterprise by collecting, organizing, presenting and analyzing every document and item in that filing cabinet. It’s a family’s library of information; and it’s the piece that makes our ecosystem go.
i3: Information, Infrastructure, Investment
Information lays the groundwork for establishing order and shared expectations across family members and stakeholders. Next, there’s infrastructure — our durable Family Ecosystem, which aligns four (4) core pillars: succession planning and family governance, wealth analysis and reporting, financial infrastructure and forecasting and private asset management (if needed).
While each of these areas can operate independently of the other, the output of the four serves the larger collective: the family and its enterprise. Investment is the final piece, the last of the three “i’s. It comes only after information has been collected and organized, informing how the infrastructure is built. Once these steps have been completed, capital allocation can be made using a family’s desired structure, while honoring its long-term plans for the enterprise.
The third "i" of “i3” — the investment piece — sets into motion an enterprise’s growth cycle, where new investments lead to new information. More information means a more robust infrastructure. With each cycle, the infrastructure becomes increasingly layered, mimicking the symbiotic and layered relationships of an ecosystem. Each growth phase is designed to set up greater investment opportunities and an increasingly sustainable family legacy.
For more information about i3’s Family Ecosystem, reach out using our Contact Page, select “i3 Family Ecosystem” under Areas of Interest and we’ll send additional materials. Or email us at info@i3resources.com.