The Power of Mentorship in Business

0:00 Hello, Welcome, everybody. Thanks for joining us for another episode of Arthur's Roundtable. Super grateful for everybody that's tuned in and shared it with your colleagues. We've been having a good time doing these and lots of interesting guests and our guest today in particular, Benjamin is Al Rich. I pronounce it right. I pronounce it all Rick. I think all Rich is fine. He's very good, yeah. Yeah, all Rick, let's make sure I got that right for the for the group. And he has been very generous with some of his colleagues, some of which we've interviewed already. So I'm super grateful to have him on the program today and think you'll find it very interesting. As you know, our topics are often family office and family office adjacent type subject matter and then some stuff that just has nothing to do with that. We're super happy to talk to Benjamin today. So with that, Benjamin, would you mind starting off with your journey and then we can talk about a whole bunch of other stuff?

0:59 Yes, absolutely. And thank you so much, Arthur. It's been a pleasure getting to know you and following your program and happy to contribute in the future as well. Let's start with my journey, because I would say it's very unusual. I started studying psychology, actually. I have a master's degree in organizational psychology from the University of Burns here in Switzerland. Yeah. And Fast forward in very big leaps. I went into sales because working in a large corporation as a psychologist, I felt like I didn't have any traction.

1:39 I couldn't really help the people as I wanted to and I decided I have to be closer to the client and when I speak, when I, when I sell, when I prospect. I saw just huge success and I changed jobs and into the cannabis industry. We had a legal loophole here in Switzerland and we were selling in CBD. It was not the, it didn't get you high. It was for recreational and medicinal purposes I would say. And we saw huge success and I knew I wanted more. I knew I wanted to do M&A and and and acquire companies. And there was just not alignment between the the founder, owner, operator of the business and and kind of how I saw things and what where I wanted to go. And Fast forward another leap, I learned about mergers and acquisitions and then I learned about this layer that's sitting on top of the entire industry, which is the capital layer. That's really the investors, the capital owners who can allocate and kind of through their allocations decide, I mean through their attention, their capital intention, decide what grows and how does it grow.

2:57 And I was very fascinated that even you could make money. That was one of the perspectives I had was really connecting investors and then taking a small sliver from from that connection. We talked in the preamble, we talked a little bit about family office insights, how your community works. And, and my mentor, I'm so thankful for him because 12 months ago he said you can connect people like businesses and investors or investors and investors. And it's kind of what Ronald Diamond also advises. He says the best thing you can do for a family office is to introduce it to another family office. So that's been my journey for the last 12 months, basically. Happy to jump into that and happy to have this conversation with you today.

3:47 So tell us about your mentor. Why is that become so important to you? You don't have to name them if you don't want to, but why? What were the elements that helped you see that as a valuable thing to do? For example, even having a mentor, right? Yes, yes, yes, yes. I, I wrote down his name and the name of his business partner because I feel tremendous gratitude towards both of them. And so I'm happy to mention them. My mentor and I always, he's myself proclaimed mentor. He would never accept the title, right? And you could consider him a friend. It's a gentleman who lives in Singapore from Australia. We went to England and then moved back to Singapore. Callum Lane is the name Callum Lane and he founded a program called Veblen, which helps ambitious professionals get their first board seat.

4:45 And one of the functions that a board member needs or it's useful to have is to raise capital for a company. So you get your board seat and then how can you help the company? Maybe you have technical expertise, but maybe you can also connect an an investor. And so he created a separate program called Guild, the Global Investment Leader Directive, where he teaches his experience and his understanding in how capital is actually being raised. And I think it's very much synchronous and aligned with family office insights, people who know, like and trust each other.

5:27 When when you send a deal to one of your buddies from your community, they know Arthur has checked this, you know, he knows what he does. And I'm going to Co invest, you know, what's the minimum ticket size or whatever the conversation is. Or let's dig into this together. And it's not like you don't raise capital from throwing out 1000 pitch texts by e-mail and then hoping something sticks. And he is so important to me because he showed me that my love for people like I became a psychologist and we can go into my the history, why I did that, talking to people as in this conversation. And then sort of the investment capital business, the economic piece.

6:13 And then you, you, you, you Weld that all together. You have a Nikki guy, you have something that you like to do, you're good at it. And you can make money because the market, you know, rewards it. And I was on fire and I had hundreds of calls and you know. Yeah, I just spoke to call, just spoke to Colton like two hours ago and we were like 2026 is going to be awesome. Yeah, by the way, Colton is one of the folks that we know commonly together who is also been instrumental in bringing some important people to the table for not just the Arthur's Roundtable podcast, but the relationship building in general. And he's, I don't mind giving a shout out to him at all. In fact, I appreciate that you brought it up. And he's got a new program called Family Office Factory where he's got a good events newsletter. He's been posting some interesting things. I think that it consolidated information for people who are interested in the family office space, that's for sure. And so, yeah, it's, he's, he's doing a great job. And let's, let's touch on what you said a little earlier and get into what caused you to feel it was important to be in this psychology business.

7:26 Let's just call it that, yeah. Yeah, so maybe let's start at the top and then let's dig a little bit down and go back in time. It was in spring 2025, my mentor told me. Gather a group of people, because people are always interested in meeting other people. They may not be interested in meeting you, but if you bring interesting people, the event itself becomes interesting. And as the networker, you kind of know everybody. And I started doing that in Zurich, in Switzerland, and basically from LinkedIn, like I didn't have anybody in my phone contacts. And one of the people I reached out to was Maxime Yardai in together with Daniel Cortes from Switzerland as well.

8:14 Daniel is a family dynamics advisor and Maxime is a next Gen. advisor. Now they're both second generation, right? And we met at one of my round tables. I invited lots of different people. We had a couple of those small ones. And then the three of us decided we're going to continue with a format that is geared specifically towards the soft side of enterprising family wealth. I would like to say to the soft underbelly of a family conflict, succession, inheritance, you name it, addiction. It's almost like opening Pandora's box. Mental health.

8:56 And you had a wonderful conversation with our friend Angelina Carlton. Who Also super nice to do that. That was a good one. And I studied psychology. I, I wanted to study maybe law or economy or even medicine. But I studied psychology because my family, my family I would say completely disintegrated. If you look at the different generations, there was nothing of substance. I, I, I was under a lot of pain. I was tremendously suffering when my parents separated and I was in the States for a year as a teenager. I came back, my mom moved out and my friends all kind of dispersed and, and I realized I didn't really have anything inside of me that could resist all these changes and still be functional.

9:49 And I went into a deep, deep spiral and it was, it was short plug, it was Tibetan Buddhism. I found a teacher, I started to practice Tibetan Buddhism. I do this now for 17 years every day. And, and it helped me to understand, OK, This is why it's happening. This is what you can do. And so I'm good on this side and I decided I have children, my children live in, in Montreal. So my, my own children are physically closer to you than they are to me because of the setup with the mom and everything, right? So I, I made it a mission and I, I was crying a lot and often, you know, when, when my children left my life, it was like pulling something out.

10:35 It was a physical experience. I've been through that, but not as dramatic. They were 20 minutes away. Yeah, yeah. And I'm happy for them. I'm happy for everyone, right. Because so, so, so, so the mission that Maxine, Danny and I have is really helping families have better relationships and, and and not avoid, avoid sort of the pitfalls that that are just there because they're just magnified if you're wealthy, but but also on on a kind of personal mission. I want to, I want to speak to mental health in general, because whether you have high net worth or not, mental health doesn't stop there.

11:15 And, and and you've been interviewing Sean Lesser from the real. I'm an ambassador with they're coming to divorce now for the West. So let's hope we can we can family relationships. That's kind of one of the messages I'm I'm I'm putting out there with the in person events that we're hosting and little bit my activity on LinkedIn. So I give you a lot of credit. I happen to think that of, and if you want to call it, call it a dogmatic religion, I guess you could do that. But the Buddhists really had a lot going on. I mean, they knew they knew how to handle stuff, right?

11:55 And they knew how to teach people to handle things. So good for you because I think it would have been, and this is just my opinion, it doesn't have any basis in empirical data. I think religion as rule is a good thing. I think it is all potentially hazardous because there's ways that people can lead you astray, even in religion, and they take advantage of that. But the Buddhists seem to have a, I've spent a lot of time studying it. I've been doing Transcendental Meditation since I was 17. I really, really appreciate the way their outlook on things, the non attachment, the whole thing. But I've studied a lot and really appreciate it. So it's just an editorial, but I think that was probably a good move and I'm glad you were able to, to, to to do that. And Sean is whatever he's done.

12:52 And I have admittedly interviewed him. I understand mentioned to you Benjamin that I knew him before he had his well articulated and open discussion about his breakdown. I knew him five years before that. And so it's good to see how and and enriching to see how people have assimilated into his program, but in a very comfortable way. If there's no real big ask, right. So it's good to see that that's working for a lot of people and I appreciate what he's doing so well. So a little plug for him too. And if you, if you, let's just face it, if you have a psychology background and you have an edge on most other salespeople because you can read people, right? Arguably.

13:41 And perhaps that's one of the reasons you prospered so much in sales, aside from the loophole for the cannabis business, right? Yeah, Yeah. It's, I've been, I've been giving it a lot of thought and, and I should, I should say here quite explicitly and, and, and clearly I really stepped away from sales because it became very repetitive. I could see the pattern and I have self diagnosed ADD like I have a very strong need for novelty and when things, when I and I have a strong need for pattern analysis. And once I start to see the, the structure, how the dots emerge and they connect, like, OK, I get the picture. Now let's move on to something new because that's what I like to do.

14:32 And I could see sales being very repetitive and, and, and, and, and a new challenge of something that's more sophisticated. Now to the point I studied psychology, I have a way of building trust with people. There is something that people say I'm speaking from the heart, right? And it's conducive to relationship building. And if two people meet within a business context and you're good at building a relationship with this person, well, it's kind of easy within embedded in that atmosphere to then should I say?

15:14 Garner trust you can conduct business. And then you can conduct business. Sometimes I would call up people and be like, I would like to do business with you. I'm like, literally the first sentence I said like, this is Benjamin, I'm from XYZ company. This is a call to tell you that I would like to do business with you. And I would give it to them, Frank. And then it would take a few months and and then, you know, you get the right moment and then you can send some samples and then you start transacting because people like to do had one guy tell me the reason why we are doing business with you is because you, Benjamin, you keep three pens in your in your trousers and you know, you, you're clever, you're smart, you're thinking, you're taking notes, you care. And we want to do business with the person like that. So it's funny sometimes, but it.

16:03 Is funny sometimes. Would you say that in the context of family dynamics that you mentioned it a little bit earlier, that all families, many families have the same problems, they're just exacerbated by wealth and become more complex simply because there are some people who have problems that don't have money get, for example, survival mode kicks in and they don't have time to deal with the problems, right, because they have to make sure they put food on the table for the kids. And if the fundamental survivorship stuff is taken care of, then they have more time to think about the issues that are causing them anxiety and that sort of thing. Is that fair to say, you think?

16:53 I this is correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this is Maslov's hierarchy right? Did I did a certification on there Was there was a guy? Not sure if I can remember his name but. He. He. Was living at the same time as Maslov and why? Whereas Maslov created the pyramid with consecutive segments, this other person, Claire Graves is his name Spiral Dynamics and he created the staircase model where he said on the left side is an egocentric focus and on the right side is a group centric we centric focus. And you start with survival, then you go into like dominating, then you go into like structures like governments and police and rules. And then you go into more sort of teamwork. And then at the end you should be like me. But it would be very beautiful world, almost like or whatever. But let's forget about the top part. And let's just say most people are somewhere here or maybe here.

17:56 But I would I would see the picture you're painting. I would kind of turn it around and be like, on the one hand, people who are fighting for survival and even in our modern societies, be it Canada, North America or Europe, but it could be, it could be China, it could be Africa or even terrible places. When you're when you're in a bad place, you might do bad things. And we see violence, we see we see all sorts of bad stuff, even with particularly with people who are fighting for survival. So in and what I, what I would, what I would sense is that when you are of an enterprising family, depending depending on your situation and let me finish that thought and then maybe I can break it down into what I'm seeing. I would argue that maybe the spotlight is on you because you're a child of someone.

18:58 There's there's probably a different sense of your community is different. If you have a single parent mom and she has to take the subway and you see here a couple of hours Max per day. If that you're kind of isolated, you might be lonely and everything, I don't know. But then if you go to insert or Oxford, you know, and you're All in all these places and you have to get a job into, into the family business, or you have to go to go to Goldman or Deloitte first, then go to the family business. You're always surrounded in a way. And you, you might not have time to think about who you are and what you wanted and how to express that. And so one last thought that I have is, and what I'm very adamant about is we need, if we learn the language of what's happening, we can express ourselves and we can start to understand each other and we can start to negotiate and we can start to build structures or or have measures if we don't know that language. And in a way, psychology in that sense, could be a language, just as reading AP and L statement is a language or the waiting in the latest DeepSeek 7 trillion parameter model is also a language.

20:12 And, and I think what what I'm, what I'm advocating for be that mental health, be that family dynamics is creating a safe space perhaps within myself. Learning that language and then starting to communicate with the outside about something that troubles me or, or something I would like to address. Because the worst thing that can happen in a way is when somebody commits suicide and nobody knows what happened. And, and I mean, I had that with a very close relative of mine that that she didn't do it. And she told me about two months ago that she she wanted to do it when she was considered it.

20:55 Yeah, yeah. She did it, she just didn't succeed. And I didn't know about that. And I'm like, I don't know how my life would have ended up. So I'm starting to think like we should talk to each other. We should we should care about each other's lives. And if you have, if you run a business or many businesses, you just just on a funny note, I was talking to an aviation broker and he said I am I'm in the business of giving CE OS 30 more nights with their children per year. It's amazing. Yeah. That's amazing. Yeah. Yeah. That that is a perfect way to to get people to understand what you're really selling, right.

21:41 You're selling 30 more nights. I like that. You know what you said earlier about language? I've often read a book and said after reading the book, Oh my God, that's exactly how I was feeling. That's exactly what I was thinking about. But they put it into words that I could use and understand, like it illuminated this problem, situation, whatever it was, right? And so it's happened so many times, I can't even count them right where I've read the book and a book and it's a wow, that's exactly what I was thinking about, but I could never put it into words. This is super instructive, right?

22:22 And so you talk about having the right language. It's not the maybe negative implications of tagging something with some sort of impairment, but having a way to communicate with each other that will potentially solve a problem. Would you also think that it's family dynamics, for example, when there's a problem, you know that And I think a psychologist has always been a good place to plug in to have a third party who is no skin in the game, to have optics, to have a viewpoint outside of everybody else that has skin in the game. So when your practice in what you're doing with family dynamics and trying to solve problems, it's is it's truly viewed as a valuable thing to have a third party who's not part of the family to at least come in and listen and digest the information and spin it back to everybody because you don't have the same consequence as everybody else who does have skin in the game.

23:31 Yeah. It's like, yeah, you have to do the work. You have to do the work. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's no, there's no magic bullet. You have to do the work. Yeah. How how do you deal with, for example, in your experience with the family member that is the trust fund? Young Playboy really not interested in solving any problems. Family meeting is called. They don't show up or they show up. And our cavalier like youth often knows everything. And so they just don't want to be bothered and just take the Lambo out to Monaco and, you know, forget about all this hard work.

24:16 How does one deal with that? Yeah, yeah. No, no, no, no. This is all super helpful. Don't even think about it that way. So the actually, I think it was 1 of this. Your your countrymen, if I can refer to them that way, that did the Rudolf Steiner School. Do you remember? Do you, are you familiar with that? I mean, that was I, I happen to be familiar with that education. My son almost went there. Somebody else I know that did and many others is a Steiner school in New York City and I happen to know a lot of people that went there. But it was, I think flew in the face of traditional education and the kids were engaged. They were, they were reading as much as they could without any pressure.

25:01 You walked into the class in the morning as one of the middle middle school kids and you cleared your desk and you have went around the room and you sent the light to somebody that you wanted to send the light to, right? And so you lit a candle. And I mean, it wasn't hocus pocus. It was like, OK, who who is it that you know that would appreciate getting the light that might be going through something difficult or you just wanted to show an appreciation for? Like if you teach that at an early age, that becomes a whole different way of thinking things. I mean that simple gesture in the morning, right, Like, OK, clear your desk, send the light to somebody. And if you didn't want to, you didn't have to, right.

25:42 Super interesting. Yeah, education. That's a whole nother podcast. What's going on there. But so go ahead. So I've spent a lot of time thinking about this and also being knee deep in deal making and as an investor and from time to time as it one that causes a deal to get done like a syndication or an intermediary. And on one extreme, first of all, there's always nefarious characters involved, right? So you have to just have your radar about that. And then I think it's fair to take New York City investment banking kind of out of it because New York City investment banking, and I'm picking on New York City for a reason, still in many respects is hard charging run through the walls and, you know, build relationships and get those big institutional checks to to to vote with you when you have a deal that needs to get done.

26:42 So that's one thing. I think we take that out of it for a minute. And then I think we need to take another thing out of it for a minute. That is, you know, the Silicon Valley temperament is share and share alike. Everybody's helping somebody. New York is. What do you have on your mind? No, thank you. Next, what do you have in your mind that sounds great? Here's the check, right? It's two different sort of systems, and they both come along with their dark side, right? But the Silicon Valley part of it was if you were sort of in the club and there was a deal that everybody was piling in on and you got a piece of it, you're likely to succeed on in the in the way that venture capital succeeded flush 90 percent, 10% or, you know, through.

27:33 OK. And I think that as time has gone on, let's just say in the last 10 years, that the relationships have become more important. And this is perfunctory stuff that we all know and just hard to do. Like it's really hard to to decide depending on where you are in your career. Let's just say your career is raising money and funding deals like it's it's hard to become patient to develop those relationships because you still have to pay the kids tuition, right? But the relationships are super important, more than important than ever. And I really believe that there was a underlying theme that was always there but didn't have a name on it, but it was really good storytelling. In other words, people don't buy. You have to have the standard good team, good idea. You done your homework, done the research demonstrated that it can possibly be done.

28:33 But if you don't, if you're not a good storyteller and you don't have the relationship with the good storytelling, you're 2 steps behind, right? A good story will get funded, right? If you have the most brilliant idea and you can't tell the story, you're screwed. Yeah, it's much better than if we just jumped in and said, OK, here's my business model, here's what I'd like to do, here's how I get paid, right. Yeah. I'd like to share with you something that has been really valuable in it was a byproduct of Family Office Insights in person and now web-based pitching sessions because that's all we do. I mean, Family Office Insights is just deal flow, right. But one of the most valuable byproducts was when an entrepreneur was being put in the room with 30 family offices that were super smart.

29:30 I mean, some of the smartest people you'd ever want to meet. And they'd pitch and you'd go around the room and they'd say, have you thought about this? Have you thought about that? Have you thought about this? And they'd walk away with half $1,000,000 worth of knowledge for the $16,000 that we charge them. And even if they didn't raise any money, which they probably would have unless it was a really bad idea, they just walked away with gold. They just got a, you know, an Advisory Board of 30 family offices that gave them stuff that they would never even have thought of. I can't tell you how it happened. They go, holy cow, we never thought about that. Right, Right.

30:12 Yeah. I think that makes sense. I also think that, for example, in the case of our poor Playboy that we've been using as an example of beating up on him is that the parents might be all fucked up, right? I mean, the parents might not be in a position where there any interest in in sort of adjusting themselves, right? And so that doesn't mean that the boy or the son can't, but it often helps if you lead by example, Right? Yes, I'm familiar with it. Yeah. Legacy trauma is real. I'm going to read just one headline here. So my wife, I'm sitting in her office, She has a vision board and it's really amazing.

31:00 But right in the center, inspired by families who were here before us, personal and family and sexual healing affirmations. Because she's had some really, really bad ancestral trauma that was passed down and she discovered not to, just to her, but in other words, she's had her own traumas, but she was able to discover the traumas of her father and her mother and the grandmother. You know, it's really, really it's deep seated in your cell structure and the way of getting good of it can often be. I mean, how many times have people sat down with a skilled psychologist and they said, well, holy cow, I blocked that out. But now that I know about it, I can deal with it and off we go, right, I'll oversimplify it, but you get my point, right? Hopefully I've also also often seen personally where there were people in my life that weren't just not ready, they weren't fertile to deal with it, whatever it happened to be. And then a few years later, whatever happened to them, whatever they read, went to an ashram, whatever, whatever, whatever triggered them to say, wait a minute, I think I'm ready for this.

32:17 And then they you have to want to do something about it, right? And I've also seen so many people who are seekers, they're always looking for the magic solution to their problem, then they're just spiraling out and always looking for a solution that's not there. Right? Like it's an endless journey for no solution because they're not willing to do the work. But I mean, that's just an editorial. I would love that. Yeah, it's in the last 18 months. AI went for from something that IBM did for big companies. I'm using it as an example, which is not exactly true or precise to everybody can do AI like it is beyond what you can do with 20 bucks a month in perplexity like or Claude or any of them, right? It's just fascinating.

33:06 Yeah, yeah. I think that it's still back to think and grow rich. If it's going to be, it's going to be up to me. So if I'm in a job that is going to get eliminated by AI and then it's up to me, not my government. Of course, I'm an American and I and I'm also one that wants as little government as possible because we know that we have to put up with graft and people bribing people and all the bad stuff that goes along with government. And I just want to, I know that'll never get eliminated. I just wanted to be as little as possible. So, and I don't think that the government is going to rescue me.

33:47 And I don't want free money. That's just my point of view, right? I think the government can have policy that can help people retrain because they, you know, they, they endless amounts of money on things that no, have no accountability. So there is the potential the government could do things that will help people. It's just that the, the way, at least in the US our government operates is they say we're going to do this because it's going to help the underprivileged, but there's no, never any accountability that it did, right? It just funded your program and never turned the money off, right. And Switzerland is a different place, right? It's, you know, so I want to touch on one more thing if it's OK with you in our last few minutes in your experience, and I'll come out Full disclosure that I've had really enriching and and I would say bountiful experiences in plant based medicine and helping deal with trauma, dealing with problems that I want to solve in my life and with others. Have you experienced any of that? I'm not asking do you disclose personally, but have you seen that used in any of your work with families and deciding that, OK, we need a psychologist, we need a mediator, we need an advisor and maybe we should do some ayahuasca together. I'm being panic on purpose, no doubt. No doubt.

35:15 A drunk uncle Rob, right. Yeah. I think that all makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. For the record, I know a family very, very well, very wealthy and divorce and kids kind of scattered and not very aligned. And they they they did do journeys, but not together separately same time, but with different shamans in the idea that that they were in agreement that it might be a good idea, but they weren't reacting, interacting with each other during the journey. They were separate with different guides. Yeah. And they came out of it where it was super Apple. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's it's it's still highly illegal.

35:58 And so do you want to remove it from that being perceived as that way in the context of therapy or words, you know, overseen by clinicians and that sort of thing and make it so it's not Eagle illegal, much like cannabis was for, you know, medicinal purposes. Right. Yeah. That's it. Yeah. I happen to be super happy to be alive during this time because I think it's absolutely amazing. So Benjamin, I have to run. I apologize. I think that we should do this if it's OK with you. Should is a bad word. I, I would really enjoy doing this again shortly. And we can just keep on going about subject matter after we publish this, if you wouldn't mind. Yeah, yeah.

36:49 So happy New Year to you, and thank everybody for listening in if you got a chance to see this. And please feel free to share among your colleagues and friends. I super appreciate Benjamin. That was awesome. Thanks for doing this. I'm going to sign off now, but we'll talk soon. OK. Thank you. OK. Thank you.