When I started this blog about a year and a half ago, I explained my reasons in the following way: a family will only hire me to help them with their business-family issues once they KNOW me. If they have just met me, or come across something of mine on the web, it would likely take quite a long time before they could feel like they knew me well enough to trust me.

So I started to share my thoughts on a weekly basis on this blog. This way, if anyone was interested in learning more about me, and wanted to get to know me and how I think, how I live, how I express myself, what is important to me, they could just read a few of my blog posts and they would understand a great deal more about me. The goal was to shorten the trust-building cycle.

You see, anyone can bullsh*t their way through a one-time article, or construct a website full of carefully crafted prose. But when you are posting a weekly piece, of about 600 words a crack, there are not that many places to hide, at least not if you write it from your heart.

I headlined this post with a song title, which I have done on more than one occasion. It is from a song by the Who, from their Quadrophenia rock opera album, about a schizophrenic boy with four personalities. I knew the song, and love Roger Daltrey’s lead vocal, but had no idea what it was really about until I Googled it and found the Wikipedia page.

But there is no Wikipedia page about me, at least not yet. Maybe some day there will be, but hopefully not, and probably not. Long ago my wife once said, “I wanna be rich and famous”. I replied that for me, you could hold off on the famous part, and maybe double up on the rich part.

But since I have moved out of the quiet and anonymous family office space, and into the advising and facilitating space, with other families, I had to come out of hiding. I don’t mind it, and my Monday-to-Friday existence is much less lonely than it was when I was spending most of my time alone in my office with my computers, managing stock and option portfolios.

On my @TSI_Heritage twitter feed, I follow lots people who consider themselves social media experts, and I must admit, plenty of them are really knowledgeable. Many of them talk about how important it is to be authentic when you “brand” yourself. I keep seeing it over and over, and I certainly believe in it. I feel like I already knew that, but the reinforcement is very positive.

An article I came across, (http://www.kpmg.com/global/en/issuesandinsights/articlespublications/social-banker/pages/default.aspx?utm_medium=social‐media&utm_campaign=2013-fs-social-banker&utm_source=twitter&utm_content=gbl+2013+aug+23+the+social+executive) spoke of using social media to “amplify your executive voice”. Nicely put, I think.

To me, being authentic is just being myself. Nobody is perfect, and everybody knows that. And when people seem too polished, I always wonder what they may be hiding. I am comfortable enough with my own shortcomings to recognize many of them, and freely acknowledge them. I know that when I come across other people who don’t try to hide their flaws, I feel much more receptive, and am more inclined to trust them.

The blog format has the beauty of being informal enough for me to express myself as openly as possible, while still hopefully providing some useful insights from time to time, and hopefully being the opposite of boring. So, can you see the real me? I hope so.

Steve Legler “gets” business families.
 
He understands the issues that families face, as well as how each family member sees things from their own viewpoint.
 
He specializes in helping business families navigate the difficult areas where the family and the business overlap, by listening to each person’s concerns and ideas.  He then helps the family work together to bridge gaps by building common goals, based on their shared values and vision.
 
His background in family business, his experience running his own family office, along with his education and training in coaching, facilitation, and mediation, make him uniquely suited to the role of advising business families and families of wealth.
 
He is the author of Shift your Family Business (2014), he received his MBA from the Richard  Ivey School of Business (UWO, 1991), is a CFA Charterholder (CFA Institute, 2002), a Family Enterprise Advisor (IFEA 2014), and has received the ACFBA and CFWA accreditations (Family Firm Institute 2014-2015).
 
He prides himself on his ability to help families create the harmony they need to support the legacy they want. To learn how, start by signing up for his monthly newsletter and weekly blogs here.