This week’s discussion is on the genuine wealthy who have gained their wealth through years of sacrifice, hard work and toil, risking assets, borrowing money, enduring sleepless nights over cash flow and missing family events. These struggles leave lasting psychological imprints, making them deeply protective of their wealth, as they appreciate the sacrifices made.

For every businessperson we meet at Future Gen who has sold their business and reaped the rewards, they are in the less than 2% club. Two per cent refers to the small number of successful private businesses in Australia.

What drives them, and what concerns them? By nature, they are natural worriers and generally good at the micro. They were taught that attention to detail matters and that doing small things well, time and time again, was the secret to success.

Secondly, they are by nature stoic, resilient and persevering. They accept that things will always go wrong, many of which are not within their control, and they work at trying to control only the controllables. When knocked down, they get up, dust themselves off and try again. By nature, they are frugal. They were successful because they learned to do things cost-efficiently. Whatever surplus they achieve, they save and or invest back in their business. They also learned early that keeping a cap on lifestyle expenses and expectations was critical.

Like all of us, their critical concerns are their children. Their greatest fear is raising financially dependent ‘trust fund kids’. They all know the adage: the first generation makes it, the second keeps it, and the third loses it. Inculcating habits and values into their children is essential if wealth is to be passed intergenerationally.

Creating wealth is difficult at the best of times. Passing wealth and the value set inherent in preserving that wealth is another task in itself.