Octavian Graf Pilati: Burning the Sails to Save the Ship: Saving a Centuries-old Family Estate at 25

Octavian Graf Pilati (0:00)

You have latent crisis, which are crisis that build up very slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly. And then people tend to think that they are sudden, but they are not. They build up for a long time.

You know, family tensions is a classic for families. The tension builds up, builds up till at some point, people can't keep back anymore. And you have something like an incident, that's the smallest thing, that's just an event that happens, it can turn into an emergency. So it's an event that endangers your family's wealth or your business.

It's not clear yet. Will we survive? Can we save it? So then you're in a crisis. Catastrophe means we have to sell or we go bankrupt or we have to liquidate. In my personal experience and in what I see with families that I know and that are around me, to get to a catastrophe from a family perspective, it is always an external and an internal factor that usually play together. So you have an internal latent crisis that no one is dealing with, no one wants to speak about, and then some external event happens and that's just a drop too much in the bucket.

Bogumil Baranowski (1:17)

Welcome to Talking Billions. We talk about big ideas, big inspirations, big topics. We take on the hardest topic of all, money. How to make it, save it, keep it. But our conversations lead us to an even bigger question, what it means to live a rich life beyond money.

My guests share their practices, principles and evergreen wisdom. I'm your host, Bogumil Baranowski, author, TEDx speaker, and investment advisor to wealth creators with patient capital and an infinite investment horizon. I work with families and individuals who aspire to grow wealth over a lifetime and generations through disciplined, thoughtful investments in durable quality businesses, while giving money meaning. Join me on this quest to unearth and share the wisdom of the ages. Let me share with you the podcast program disclosure statement. Blue Infinitas Capital, LLC is a registered investment advisor and the opinions expressed by the firm's employees and podcast guests on the show are their own and do not reflect the opinions of Blue Infinitas Capital. All the statements and opinions expressed are based upon information considered reliable, although it should not be relied upon as such. Any statements or opinions are subject to change without notice. The information presented is for educational purposes only and does not intend to make an offer or solicitation for the sale or purchase of any specific securities, investments or investment strategies. Investments involve risk and unless otherwise stated are not guaranteed. The information expressed does not take into account your specific situation or objectives and is not intended as recommendations appropriate for any individual. Listeners are encouraged to seek advice from a qualified tax, legal or investment advisor to determine whether any information presented may be suitable for their specific situation. Past performance is not indicative of future performance.

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My guest today is Octavian Graf Pilati, a member of an Austrian aristocratic family whose lineage traces back nearly a thousand years. He's the founder of the Antifragile Family.

At 25, he was handed responsibility for saving his family's centuries-old estate through a devastating financial crisis, a story that was so instructive that the Harvard Business School turned it into a case study and called it Burning the Sails to Save the Ship. Since then, Octavian has built a body of work around what actually makes multi-generational families endure governance, conflict, succession, and the human systems that either hold a legacy together or quietly tear it apart. Welcome to the show, Octavian. So nice to see you.

Octavian Graf Pilati (4:01)

It's a pleasure. Welcome as well.

Bogumil Baranowski (4:05)

I've been following your work and I've been reading your essays for a while. We traded e-mails and I was really looking forward to this conversation. You've been so generous sharing your family story. I think it's both a reminder and inspiration, a framework and certain lessons that many other families can apply. So I want to thank you for sharing it.

I have many questions about your age, 25, when you found out some things from your father. I'll come back to it. But before we get there, I think a lot has happened before that moment. So I'm curious about your childhood and upbringing. What was it like to grow up in your family?

Octavian Graf Pilati (4:41)

Well, obviously for me as a child, it was my normality. You know, that's the way the world was for me. Well, for someone looking in from the outside, it would have been very, very different. Like, I give you an interesting example I like to give is when I was still in kindergarten, the elders in the village would use the polite version to speak to me, which you wouldn't do with a child otherwise. So in German language, there's an impolite way of speaking to someone. And then there's a polite way to speak to someone. In English, you don't have that. But it would be, let's say, someone, you're like a four year old child and this 70 year old man comes up and calls you sir, for example. And as a little child, it's a bit confusing. They're like, why?