About
Our firm was founded by David Smorgon, a member of one of Australia’s best known business families. When Smorgon Consolidated Industries was sold off in 1995, it ended a remarkably successful 70-year history that spanned four generations. And it marked one of the lowest points of David’s life. This difficult experience, and the lack of high quality, independent support available, ignited his passion for advising other families. Hence Pointmade.
Today, we are a boutique advisory company, focused on helping families navigate and transcend the often complex multi-generational dynamics at the intersection of family, business and ownership.
We exist because many families struggle with honest communication, trust, governance and preparing the next generation for what is to come. Research suggests around two-thirds of all family wealth transitions fail.1 And half of Australia’s wealthy families have no succession plan.
As an objective, independent third party, unequivocally on your side, we facilitate some of the most crucial conversations a family or founder may ever have — whether they are simply planning for the future, or seeking to resolve the most challenging and pressing of family or ownership issues. We provide support in effecting genuine change to deliver enduring family and business success.
Together, we bring decades of relevant, personal experience to the table; as a multi-generation business family, as CEOs and chairs of family businesses and family offices, and as deeply experienced, credentialed family and business advisors.
We go where others don’t, even when it is difficult to say or hear. We understand and care about the sensitive and complex challenges families often face because we have walked in our clients’ shoes.
Family businesses are different. What makes them different is the family, and a healthy family enterprise needs healthy family relationships.
Unfortunately, we tend to pack our family issues in our ‘suitcase’, hoping to leave them there, out of sight and mind. It’s understandable because conversations with loved ones about values, wealth (and its purpose), succession, capabilities, fairness and inheritance, are not easy.
Yet if you keep packing your issues in your suitcase, one day, perhaps prompted by a crisis, the suitcase will burst. The emotional and financial cost can be devastating.
Pointmade know how to unpack your suitcase carefully. We are unique because we go further, dig deeper, listen with genuine empathy. And we then work collaboratively with our clients to develop pragmatic, lasting and often transformative solutions.
The process can be challenging, yet the families we’ve helped are thrilled with the results of our involvement.
Your best asset is not your balance sheet. Your best asset is each and every family member that sits around your table. Give them a voice. The rewards are remarkable.
DAVID SMORGON, OAM FOUNDER, POINTMADE