Turn experience into a curriculum worth inheriting
Through a Financial Legacy Session, you begin mentoring the next generation in the way only you can - through the lived stories, decisions, and values that shaped your path.
An enduring philosophy from a lifetime in business: work hard, think hard, and keep smiling when the water gets rough.
You can’t teach wisdom through a will. But you can leave behind the voice that learned it.
James built his first business one long night at a time. No shortcuts. No playbook. Just endurance, sharpened by risk and faith in his own hands.
His story is one of preservation of values that stayed intact through every cycle. History, though, is full of fortunes that didn’t hold that same line.
Cornelius Vanderbilt began with a single ferry in New York Harbour, charging passengers a few cents a ride. Through shrewdness and persistence, he built railroads that connected a continent and a fortune worth more than three billion dollars in today’s money.
Yet within three generations, it was gone. His descendants spent freely, built mansions the size of hotels, and lost sight of the ethic that had built their family name. At a family reunion in 1973, not one Vanderbilt was a millionaire.
The empire hadn’t fallen because of bad investments. It had eroded because the story that built it - the grit, the restraint, the purpose, was never taught.
A Financial Legacy Session is the first chapter in what could become your family’s private course in how to live well with what you’ve built.
What you share becomes the groundwork for their own judgment. Over time, these reflections will become a living philosophy to learn from and add to.
You’re passing on a way of seeing. The steady habits, the cautions, the principles that once guided you through uncertainty.
That is mentorship in its truest sense.

"You need tenacity and emotional intelligence. It's about fighting for what you want and understanding how things connect." Sharon Douglas on building a business
How it works
Every Financial Legacy Session unfolds as a guided conversation. We ask the questions that draw out your experiences, decisions, and lessons. You speak openly; we shape those stories into a personal course in judgment, risk, and reward.
Story Session
A focused three-part conversation (around three hours) that captures one essential theme in your philosophy of wealth.
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Principles: Your outlook on work, wealth, and the meaning of success.
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Proof: Defining experiences that shaped that philosophy.
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Perspective: What you would want remembered or applied by those who follow.
Short enough to complete in a single sitting, yet deep enough to stand as a complete lesson.
Narrative Session
A fuller five-part dialogue (around five hours, held over one or two meetings) that traces the long arc of experience.
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Principles: The beliefs that guide your financial and personal choices.
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Proof: The story of how those beliefs were tested and refined.
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Failures and Turning Points: The decisions that changed direction and taught endurance.
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Stewardship: How you define responsibility and generosity after success arrives.
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Perspective: The wisdom you want carried forward.
Each conversation is professionally recorded and edited into a crafted multimedia portrait. You speak; we listen. What remains is a clear record of your philosophy and a course your family can revisit, one chapter at a time.

Angus Innes on why Union College named a room after him.