Family Business Audiocast | Episode 14 | Sandor Habsburg | Foundation for Peace

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About Our Guest:

Sandor Habsburg, the Archduke of Austria, is a prominent figure engaged in private governance, leadership, international relations, and philanthropy. He has made significant contributions to the European intellectual landscape, following a family legacy that spans centuries, and has a rich personal background in thermodynamics related to energy conservation. In recent years, his focus has shifted towards artificial intelligence and distributed ledger systems, particularly in their potential applications for sustainable programs. Committed to preserving tradition and assisting those in need, he has also been elected Grand Master of several historical orders, including the Imperial Austrian Order of Franz Josef. His dedication to tradition, values, and philanthropy emphasizes his multifaceted role as a leader in contemporary society.

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[Transcript]

R. Adam Smith: [Intro] Welcome to the Family Business Audiocast on LinkedIn. I am R. Adam Smith, creator of this audiocast series. As an entrepreneur, investor, founder, investment banker, and board leader the last 25 years, I am fortunate for my many experiences within the family firm industry.

A warm thank you to our live audience on LinkedIn today – and for those listening in the future.

A brief comment on why I created this broadcast: private companies are a passion of mine, having grown up in a family of entrepreneurs, and having engaged for two decades in deals, strategic transformations, investments, and boards, with an array of fascinating family enterprises, family firms, and family offices. I founded this series to offer a useful platform for listeners to hear from veterans, academics, and leaders in the vast family firm ecosystem. Whether you are a family business owner, building, running, or advising a family office, [01:00] or just expanding your family office activities, I hope these conversations are useful and enlightening. And now, it is time to turn our attention to our accomplished guest on today’s episode.

I am pleased to host our esteemed guest today, His Imperial and Royal Highness Sandor Hapsburg. Your Highness, welcome to our conversation today. I'm going to start with a few words on His Highness, one of the greatest thinkers of his time today. He is active in private governance, leadership, international relations, and philanthropy. In addition to being leader on the European intellectual scene consistent with this family legacy for centuries, he is active in family companies and on boards. He has an in-depth understanding of international agreements, international finance, fiscal policy, and good governance.

Most recently, he has been active in the area of AI and the distributed ledger system as it may be applied to very sustainable programs, and he has extensive experience in thermodynamics as it applies to energy conservation going back to 1985. His professional life has taken him from his work as a research engineer where he received [02:00] several patents, and from the founding of several companies to his philanthropic work with his wife, Herta Margarete. His Highness is a direct descendant of Empress Maria Teresa, Catherine the Great of Russia, and Queen Victoria of Great Britain, and he is a member of the Tuscan and Spanish lines of the family.

He is dedicated to preserving traditions, values, and helping the less fortunate, and has been elected as Grand Master of several historical orders, including the Imperial Austrian Order of Franz Josef.

Sandor Habsburg: A pleasure to meet everybody this evening. Thank you for that very nice introduction, Adam. I just had a couple of minutes time to see who all is listening this evening, and it's really nice to see that we have people from almost all parts of the world this evening. Good evening to everybody.

R. Adam Smith: Yes, I see that. Okay, let's get going for about a half hour or so. [03:00] Let's talk about heritage. Your family dates back almost a thousand years in the European aristocracy and ruling families. On the one hand, you can look at a dynasty that you're part of, such as the Austro-Hungarian Empire, as a government and political entity, and on the other hand, as a family-related business. Earlier, you and I discussed how a governing empire seeks to, quote, "create a level playing field," unquote, and to instill core values that last in society. Please share with us a brief comment on your heritage and how it relates to family business as well.

Sandor Habsburg: Thank you very much, Adam. Well, as Adam put it very succinctly, if you have been trying to run a country for generations, you — or let's say, it is important to understand, particularly in the Austrian-Hungarian context, that you have lots of cultures, lots of origins, lots of languages, lots of religions. And as a monarch, you are concerned that each one should have his rightful place.

[04:00] So let's say you call this a live-and-let-live philosophy. So if you now look at a family office and you look at your activities and business as a whole, then you try to use the same rules to apply to your business activities. In other words, if you're doing business in Austria, you will do it according to the rules and cultures that exist in Austria. If I'm going to do the same thing, say in Sudan in Africa, then I will take into account of doing business in Sudan as the Sudanese do and take into account their way of doing it and their culture and be very cautious not to put upon them that what I have from where I come from.

R. Adam Smith: Right, it's a very delicate matter. Thank you for sharing that.

Let's talk about sustainability. Sustainability is a vital element in our society, our climate, [05:00] institutions, our companies, and our families, and maintaining sustainable family enterprises and firms and systems also requires, as we have discussed, a holistic perspective that avoids compartmentalization as we discuss together and sometimes narrow linear short-term thinking. And much as the Austrian Empire lasted for centuries, the Austrian Empire had many family businesses and family values and family systems that created a powerful commercial ecosystem, industrial ecosystem, military ecosystem that lasts today in various forms. You once said, “Because only when we know our history can we promote peace.” So please do share your views on this dynamic and the need to keep the music going.

Sandor Habsburg: Well, maybe I'll start with saying that there's a saying that says, [06:00] “history repeats itself.” Well, in a certain sense, it does, because we forget what happened in the past and then we go about doing things and we make the same mistakes. So if we have the ability to learn from the past and so, say, well, we see what worked and produced peace and harmony, and which things don't work and produce the contrary, we can use history in our past to understand that. But what’s very important is, I think, to humanity as a whole, and is probably the biggest threat of globalization as a whole, is that people lose their identity or have a fear of losing their identity, and then they tend to rebel. So it's very important in this context to, when we think of sustainability, is to try to set a way forward [07:00] with a say — I don't want to call it rules because rules are too strict. You need to give the system, or that which you're trying to do, a set of tools and try to instill in the persons how they can use these tools to take care of whatever happens in the future because we don't know what's gonna happen tomorrow. So, we try to give our present generations and the next generations vehicles that are as flexible as possible to take advantage of opportunities or change the direction of the endeavor of the corporate companies, the companies, families’ activities to adjust to the changes that take place.

And if we look at the history of a lot of large families and their corporations, it's very interesting to see how they evolve. And the ones that evolve, they progress, they continue to exist, and if they do not evolve, then they tend to [08:00] run into crisis and fail because the times have changed, but they did not change. And you will see the same thing — as an extreme example, people have said to me, “Well, wouldn't you want the monarchy to return?” And I said, “You're asking the wrong question. You should ask me, ‘How do I think a monarchy today would look like 100 years after it ended?’” It would be completely different than it was 100 years ago. Why? Because social structures and people have evolved, they have changed. We have a different level of education, we have a different worldly understanding, we have a whole different set of issues that we did not have 100 years ago. So the idea of going back doesn't function; going forward, looking forward does, but of course, we don't know what happens tomorrow. So in the sense of sustainability and the holistic way of looking at it, you have to try to look at all facets of what is happening around you and not [09:00] just focus on the very narrow margin of your present activity.

I hope I answered your question, Adam.

R. Adam Smith: Yes, we could probably stay a couple of hours on that. Let's continue.

Sandor Habsburg: It's very, very involved. Yes.

R. Adam Smith: Maybe let's go over to sustainability in terms of the impact of good in the world and a bit on the Flame of Peace that you have founded and you work closely with your wife and many philanthropic activities with Herte. Maybe share a bit with the audience about the Flame of Peace.

Sandor Habsburg: This is a good one. Well, let's say — I'd like to start with a very fundamental way of thinking. The way of thinking is based on respect and not tolerance. Why respect?

Well, if we respect one another, we can agree to disagree which is very good. If we respect others and respect our nature and our environment, then we wouldn't [10:00] do a lot of the things that we do; we wouldn't pollute, for example. If we respect the rivers, we will not dump anything into it. And this is the guiding principle that we use also in our organization, which is known mostly by name of its award, which is the Flame of Peace. The organization is actually called the Association for the Furtherance of Peace with headquarters in Vienna, and we work in quite a few countries in the world. And the interesting thing is, this organization is based purely on respect. It is 100% volunteer. It has no employees. But it has about 10,000, let's say, on average, volunteers working in the world, trying to help people and connect people and, let's say, provide those who don't have something for there where people have more than they need.

And it works. Why? It works because people want to do something. So if you combine the idea of respect [11:00] and motivating people, then you have a pretty good formula for success, for sustainability, and of course also for protecting one's identity, one's heritage, one's culture, all the beautiful things in life. And maybe this one thought to the way of thinking is to add that if you think of our society, if we value things, then we will have a different attitude of how we go about it. In other words, if you buy something because you cherish it and value it because it's nice, it's beautiful, and you enjoy it, you will also take care of it. If you're buying something just out of a utilitarian point of view, it tends to be [12:00] of minor quality, cheap, it will fail at some point, you will throw it away, and you will buy again, and this will repeat itself. What happens that way, well you start consuming a lot of resources and you start producing a lot of trash and waste. If you did it on a value-based way of thinking, then all of these other things just would not happen, because you just don't live that way.

And this is, of course, very contradictory to consumer society, but this is that what we do and this is what we try to promote within our organizations. And at the same time, using this philosophy to help other people, mostly to help people help themselves.

R. Adam Smith: True, I think we can admit that capitalism is one of the greatest institutions in modern society, but it's far from perfect and we need more of a caring capitalism, which is a phrase of the charity that I support. But I like this [13:00] concept of value-based consumption. So maybe we'd like to hear your thoughts on the paradox of capitalism and maybe that part of our society.

Sandor Habsburg: Well, you know, capitalism — I'll take a very, say, maybe very extremely critical opinion. Capitalism, socialism, communism, all of these things are theories. They're theoretical ideas of how humans think and will act. But it's only a theory, so it's very nice to philosophize about it, but it usually does not take reality and human nature into account.

But the problem, the actual only problem that we have, let's say from all of these — I don't think you can consider actually strictly speaking capitalism as an ideology as communism or socialism or these things would be. Capitalism is just a way of trying to describe [14:00] how the economy is functioning, yes? And it's a for-profit sort of way of thinking.

R. Adam Smith: Yes.

Sandor Habsburg: But what we have lost, and this is probably the correcting factor that could be, it doesn't have to be, but could be quite fundamental, is, as you said, we have to put value back into it. In other words, if we buy, in each person's own opinion, of course, things that are beautiful, that are nice, that we will cherish, that we will take care of, it would combat your classical definition of consumerism. In other words, I'm not just buying something for the sake of buying it. I stopped to think I'm not going to buy junk, because if I buy junk, it's not going to serve me as well as if I buy quality or something that will endure, not just for me, but will endure for generations. [15:00] So this would dramatically curve the mass production and to produce as cheaply as possible. It would change capitalism back to producing less, but therefore of higher value and lasting longer. So, if you think within our present economic system, if we, as the consumer, buy and use our power as citizens to buy things along this logic, industry will adjust to it quite automatically. And it would have a lot of positive effects. Most of all, protecting our environment and not producing lots of trash and dumping it recklessly or burdening the environment.

R. Adam Smith: I'm sure you find it a bit ironic that the definition of sustainable capitalism was only [16:00] instituted officially in the Oslo Symposium of 1994, and 1992 in the UN Conference of Environmental Development, considering that your family tree goes back to 1273 with Rudolph I the king. So the idea of sustainability being relatively new is concerning.

I'm currently reading David Attenborough's book that highlights the importance of being connected to nature, right? Like you are. And not just climate, but respecting the world. It's quite a longevity of perspective that you have. What do you think of what we can do more on the climate side?

Sandor Habsburg: Well, what we can do on the climate side, I think, is almost infinite. But you're mentioning when people come up with terms and terminologies, and I call catchy phrases, you know, to say sustainable capitalism. [17:00] Capitalism itself is not the problem. The problem that we have is the total disregard for nature and the environment. That's actually our problem. It's not capitalism that’s the problem, but it's this disrespect. So if we go back to that very, very simple fundamental thing and say, we treat everything with respect, then it makes everything afterwards much simpler. By which rules will we abide? Well, you don’t need a lot of rules so long you're not out to make a quick buck, as they would say, you know, and instead of saying, well, I can do whatever I want to, and who cares what happens afterwards?

You know, people ask me what I think about CO2, for example, and I say, well, CO2 is a very, very important chemical combination. I say, without CO2, you won't have [18:00] any plants. So if we have too much CO2 in the air, it means our plants are going to grow better. So when we, for example, have greenhouses, we pump CO2 into them to make the plants grow better. So is CO2 the problem?

I don't think CO2 itself is the problem. It's all the other pollutants that we're producing which are deadly which are the problem. CO2 happens to be a byproduct of combustion, but there are many, many other things that are much more terrible. Those of you who are, you know, were around in the '80s, you know, nobody was talking about CO2. Back then, people were talking about fluorinated hydrocarbons, i.e. refrigerants like freon, air-conditioning systems, you know, it's creating the hole in the ozone layer and it's destroying the environment and we're all gonna die.

[19:00] I think people particularly, or large organizations, are looking for the problem and a solution, and unfortunately I don't believe in a problem, in a solution. The problem is, you have to look at it really holistically, you know. We need to work in a clean and proper way in everything we do, so the couple automobiles themselves driving around isn't the problem. If you look at — take it from example the CO2 in our environment, there are many things that produce a lot more CO2 in our environment than do automobiles. But automobiles produce all sorts of other waste and other problems that are associated with their production, with their recycling, with their destruction, with their storage, when they have expired, [20:00] useful life. And all of these things are far more viable but much more important than worrying about the CO2 if you look at it in a holistic point of view.

I had a very interesting conversation with some people in the automobile industry, and I said, “Look, I think we can solve our problem really quickly.” Of course, I was trying to be provocative, and I said to him, “Look, we're simply going to tell everybody to protect the environment, they should drive their cars now twice as long as they have been driving them so far.” So I'm a bad example because I tend to drive my cars for about 10 years. But let's say your average car gets driven somewhere between three and five years. So let's change that to six and 10 years and we immediately will produce only half as many cars as we need, which means we only need half as much resources, we need half as much [21:00] energy to produce them, and so forth and so forth, and so forth, because this would contradict exactly that what the automobile industry would like.

But if you look at it practically and said, if the automobile industry built cars that we will enjoy and value and we will keep them for twice as long as we have kept them so far, then it would dramatically improve the problems that we have out there and it would not have that effect of a lot of people say it's going to put a lot of people out of work because to make things better and do it properly and to do things in an orderly fashion takes more people, and more people doing something productive rather than nonproductive work.

R. Adam Smith: Right. Just for a number reference, there's 1.5 billion vehicles in the world and 85 million are made a year. So it's not a small—

Sandor Habsburg: It's not a small number. It would have a mega impact. There are other things, you know. We spend a lot of time shipping stuff [22:00] all the way around the world, which is probably not really necessary. If the example that you and I talked about is — I love this example — is if I go to a carpenter and have him make a table and four chairs for me and my family, or six chairs, then you still — yeah, okay, my computer, I thought was shutting down — then I'm gonna have a table and six chairs which will last me for my life and probably a couple of generations afterwards. But if I go the other way and go down to a supermarket or department store and simply buy something quickly then I'm probably gonna do that several times in life. But my point was, if I go to the carpenter, it's the local guy who's going to be making it. It's not going to be made three continents away and shipped halfway around the world so that I can buy this inexpensive table and six chairs. [23:00] So the way we go about this and how we deal with things would dramatically change all of the things that we see and the geopolitical problems that we see, for example as we said, the pandemic. And as Adam asked in the question of how do I see sustainability, I see sustainability very strongly also from, let's say, a point of sovereignty of countries.

If countries cannot feed and supply energy to their own people, then they're not really sovereign countries anymore. And I think we need to focus much more in producing our own food and producing those things that we need locally.

R. Adam Smith: Right, we talked about this—

Sandor Habsburg: This would dramatically change the world's political landscape as well.

R. Adam Smith: For sure, absolutely. We talked about the importance of effective sovereignty and let's talk a bit more about that from a leadership perspective. I see sovereignty can be generally defined as supreme authority, [24:00] and sovereignty entails hierarchy within the state, but also external autonomy for the states, and it can be assigned to people or institutions that have this authority. But you were saying earlier with me that authority requires the ability to sustain a society over time and provide these basic needs. And that's very similar to a large family business, which has sovereignty based in their own values to excel and survive and thrive.

You mentioned about the importance of letting people live, which essentially must entail empowering the best in each people. Maybe talk a bit about that theme a bit of letting people live. What do you mean by that?

Sandor Habsburg: Let's say a country which can feed itself and can supply its people with energy and all the basic things of life cannot be put under pressure or made to do things in ways [25:00] the people that are living there don't want to live that way. And the same goes for a family business. If that family business is critically dependent on many external factors over which they have no influence, then they will be managed and they will be controlled and they won't have the flexibility to make their own decisions for themselves. So when you structure a family business or family office and look at what things you are investing in and how you invest, then it really makes a lot of sense to invest in those things which you really understand, you have in-depth knowledge, or you have in-depth competency for it, and you really understand what's happening and that you have sufficient influence to take those measures of how to modify things as time goes on.

I think that's very, very important [26:00] in both cases: in the case of sovereignty and in the case of a company.

R. Adam Smith: Thank you. Your Highness is part of one of the most colorful powerful eras of modern European society, the Austria-Hungary Empire. A bit on that. One of Europe's major powers at the time, the Austria-Hungary Empire was geographically the second largest country in Europe after the Russian Empire and the third most populous after Russia and the German Empire. The Empire built up the fourth largest machine-building industry in the world after the United States, Germany, and the UK, and also became the third largest manufacturer and exporter, and to construct Europe's second largest railway network after the German Empire. Not to mention owning a very large landmass which is one of the largest in modern history.

It would be great to share with us one or two of the stories of your family heritage that you feel defined the legacy and mission of the Austro-Hungarian Empire over time.

Sandor Habsburg: Well, [27:00] I think it's really hard where to start in this. I think that maybe one little tad bit of history which will help some persons, a lot of the people here on this call, maybe understand, the similarity between the United States of America and the Austrian-Hungarian Empire is much greater than most people would think.

One is that the Constitution of the United States was written in the same year that Empress Maria Theresa and her son, Joseph II, implemented the first book of law that applied to all persons regardless of creed, status, or whatever within the empire. And [28:00] it's very, very interesting to see that the basic principles that are reflected in that book of law are exactly the same principles that you find in the Constitution of the United States. If you look at the structure of the United States with its 50 states, its governors, each state being actually a country within itself, independent, and having a president which is pretty close to becoming as you can get to a monarch actually with the limitation that he just gets reelected or gets elected. But the government in the federal government structure is amazingly similar to the multinational structure that we had in the Austrian-Hungarian Empire.

The uniqueness is that all of the states within the empire were sovereign states. They just had a [29:00] common head of state. This is the biggest difference to the US. And of course that the system of elections in the United States goes much further than we did have it in the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, but we had a House of Parliament with a Senate and a House of Representatives just like you have in the United States. So it's amazingly similar. And if you ask me, where would Austria-Hungary be today from that point of view, I think that the evolution and the level of education and development of society would have led us to quite a similar structure as the United States has today, which also has evolved a lot in the last 200 years. So I think this is maybe that which should give people things to think about.

And the United States, for the most part, is very similar [30:00] that people believe that people should do things how they feel they should do it, and other people shouldn't tell them how to live their lives. I spent the better part of seven years in the United States, so I do know the US quite well and there's a lot to be said for thinking this way.

R. Adam Smith: Well, thank you for sharing that. We have some Europeans in our midst of course here on the call: Spiros, and Monica, and Ruby from France, Comron from Pakistan, Andrea as well from Slovakia. So it's great to discuss the global perspective as well of the issues.

Sandor Habsburg: Well, if I throw in there for all of the Europeans here, if you think back to the times of the Holy Roman Empire, and you look at that and how it functioned, and how we got maybe a little bit off track from there, we had [31:00] all the components to actually have a wonderful structured society. But then certain structures got put in place that were rather counterproductive to that way of thinking. But if you look at the European Union, except for a couple of critical issues, we'll probably get there eventually, but it's still going to take some time.

R. Adam Smith: It takes a while to produce lasting systems, of course, and that's very relevant to the topic of the audiocast in a way, is looking at the ability to have longevity and to nurture that longevity in family firms, which people say comprise over 80-85% of the world economy. So it's quite a large ecosystem.

One last item and related to that topic of the leaders and organizations that stand out, let's talk a bit about heroes. In today's world, heroes seem to be in shorter supply. I think that our modern press empathizes short-term information and our leaders get often somewhat [32:00] inconsistent in their values or get caught up in compromise.

And also our society extracts a heavy toll on those that rise to the top. It would be great to hear from you, with your positive perspective on the world, some thoughts on heroism and who you might respect in today's world.

Sandor Habsburg: Well, this is a good one, a really good question. We didn't talk about this one before, so I have to really think hard. I think that what the world is looking for, the world is looking for leaders, okay? And they're looking for leaders who set an example. We have tried to replace those leaders with what as Adam is calling heroes, people who, you know, like movie stars, people who we see and we can identify with, but the problem is that, that what we see tends to be fictional and not reality. [33:00] Real leaders who are apparent, let's say, Mahatma Gandhi, would be a wonderful example of such a leader who set an example and people could look up to him and say, I don't know if I can manage that, but I can try to get close to that.

And maybe — and Adam, I touched on this before — maybe together in family offices, because it does control a lot of the financial wealth that exists in the world are concentrated in these offices, in these families. If we set an example, and a visible example, not just working behind the scenes as we have done in the past, but become more visible in a way that the everyday [34:00] person can say, wow, look at that guy. He's really successful. But at the same time, he's out there, or she, is trying to help people and make life better and do that actually which we have been taught to say our governments will do for us. But unfortunately, those of us who are working very hard in the nonprofit area do realize that more people fall through the system than actually people who are being helped in many cases.

So there is a huge opportunity, I think, of not only, yes, by setting example by, by showing the way to do things and being above politics and get out of this good guy/bad guy type of situation and get out of all the infighting that is taking place in politics and set [35:00] a standard and to set an example that even politicians could follow.

R. Adam Smith: I think to create something tangible like that, which is really perceptible by touching it intellectually and emotionally would be very, very powerful.

Sandor Habsburg: Yes, we have to — how should I say — we're talking about sustainability in the sense of a family office. Well, the first thing that everybody thinks about that, we think about generations, right? We're not thinking about the next five years, we are thinking about the next 20 to 40 years, right? But our political system today has reduced political thinking, usually, just through the period of election, which is, you know, four or five years. It’s an awful short period of time and, of course, a politician who is only in office for this period of time, this is the only time in which he can effectively do [36:00] something.

So, funnily enough, if you look at our historical development, and take the last thousand years or last 500 years it doesn't really matter, the things that have lasted and have been built which we look back on and say, look at Rome, look at the beautiful buildings, look at all of these things, well, these weren't built because somebody was thinking in the term of five years. No, they were thinking in terms of generations. So I think that families and family offices do actually have a huge responsibility because they have the ability to think in generations.

Unfortunately, our typical politicians and political parties do not have that ability because of the electoral system that limits them in that. But we as family offices don't have that limitation. And in a certain respect, it gives us the responsibility to be the component which is thinking in generations. So, [37:00] when politics is going in a certain direction, then it's upon us to maybe talk to some people and say, well, maybe shouldn't we go in a little bit in a different direction because that is not going to take care of the future and take care of our children and grandchildren?

R. Adam Smith: Absolutely. We'll wrap up soon. We were mentioning the vast array of interests and knowledge that you have. Perhaps it’s time for you to write a book and one of the topics could be a series on the successful European rulers could be interesting, from Charlemagne to Louis the 14th of France, Queen Victoria of course, Matilda of Tuscany. There's lots of fascinating topics in the European construct.

Well, thank you for your discussion today on heroes and sustainability. I think we'll have another conversation on the code of living as we have been discussing within the current [38:00] environment and the evolution and expansion and institutionalization of the family firm enterprise — world enterprise really, it's quite large. I think people underestimate it, so it's wonderful to have you today connect the dots between a legacy and heritage of a larger cultural empire and dynasty to the microcosms of family business, which collectively are quite substantial.

I hope you enjoyed these topics today. What else is on your mind you'd like to share with the audience?

Sandor Habsburg: Well, I have one last thought, because the way you just succinct things together. I won't mention company name, but I was speaking with a member of one of the more [39:00] prominent industrial families here in Europe. They're really a multinational world business today. And we were talking about legacy, and we were talking about sustainability and everything that we've actually talked about is about principles and values, right? Such as respect.

And in their family business, which is really a huge, you know, with rival GM, for example. He said, "Look, if a member of the family wants to be on the board of directors or work in the firm, he's welcome to do so if he's qualified and he's able to." But, like he himself, he didn't feel like he was ready for that. So he did not participate, but he was a shareholder, of course. He said, but his job was to make sure that, you know, he didn't feel he was good enough to do the job, but his job was to make sure he had people who had the ability to do the job. What his job was then to [40:00] make sure that the corporation was following the principles that they felt was important to sustain the family's business over generations and I think that's maybe one of the most important lessons when we think of families in generations. Not everybody is qualified to do that what we would normally expect of them. But if we leave them the freedom to say, well, I don't think I'm good enough to do it, but I think I'm able to make sure that we have people who have the qualifications to do that what is necessary to create that sustainability.

I think that's maybe a little tidbit that makes one think about how to do this in the long term.

R. Adam Smith: For that reference to qualification, which is quite a subjective topic because it's always in the eye of the beholder, but [41:00] I did catch this topic in your recent conversation with your colleague, Thomas Struck, on a recent event with Alexander Galambos talking about creating a circle of experts around you in the family business but also relates to government and life as a whole as well, right? I assume you have some friends you refer to for trusted advice yourself.

Sandor Habsburg: Yes, I mean, somebody once asked me, “Your family was around for so long, what was their secret?” And I said, “Look, I don't think there's any magical secret, but just think of it this way: whatever they had had to work for the smartest guy in the family, but it also had to work for the stupidest guy in the family. Otherwise, he wouldn't have been able to do his job and it would not have continued the family's legacy.” And from my point of view, it is to be well informed, respect people, [42:00] respect everything around you, and I think you've got a pretty good set of tools to work with. And yes, you need lots of advisors, you need a lot of people who filter your information, but if you think of all the great and successful people out there, they succeeded, because they took decisions, they followed through, and they stayed behind it, they didn't give up. And, you know, it's those, I think, very simple things which every human being in this world is capable of doing, that is the, say, the formula to success and sustainability.

R. Adam Smith: That's wonderful. Thank you so much. It's been great today. I'd like to thank our family business audiocast attendees today, as well as our esteemed guest, His Imperial and Royal Highness Sandor Habsburg. Sandor, thank you so much for today, it was terrific.

Sandor Habsburg: [43:00] Adam, great pleasure, and thank everybody for listening and putting up with me.

R. Adam Smith: That's wonderful. We'll do it again. And also—

Sandor Habsburg: Gladly, any time on any subject, whatever you wish.

R. Adam Smith: Good, we will, we will, thank you, and for joining us in your late evening. Also, I think we should thank the Family Business Center and its founder, Professor Monica Nadova Kroslakova, Ph.D. of the University of Economics of Bratislava for arranging today's conversation, our mutual friend. Thank you very much, Monica.

Sandor Habsburg: Yes, thank you. Thank you very much, because without her, it would not have happened.

R. Adam Smith: Exactly. Okay, this is R. Adam Smith signing off. Stay tuned for the next episode of the Family Business Audiocast on LinkedIn.

Sandor Habsburg: Thank you.

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Explore the strategic intricacies of family business success with the RAS Family Business Audiocast. Join R. Adam Smith as he delves into exclusive discussions with global leaders shaping the future of private wealth and enterprise. Each episode offers a rare glimpse into the core decisions driving prosperity in high-stakes markets. Tune in to gain expert insights and innovative strategies that empower family businesses to thrive across generations.

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Family Business Audiocast™