For Wealth Advisors and Family Offices

Blackburn Mentoring gives the young adults in your client families one dedicated mentor for ongoing, one-on-one work on routines, a first real job, decisions and purpose. It complements the next gen events and financial literacy programs you already run. The family always chooses, the young person agrees what is shared, and you stay in your role as adviser.

Where one-on-one mentoring fits next to your next gen program

Most next gen offerings are built around knowledge: how the family’s wealth is structured, how investing works, what governance means. Those programs answer the question “what should I know?” Mentoring answers a different one: “what am I actually doing this week?”

• A young adult attends your financial literacy weekend, then needs someone to help them build a budget and stick to it for three months.
• A family wants their son to hold a job outside the business before joining it. Someone has to help with the resume, the interviews and the early weeks. See working outside the family business first.
• A daughter finishes college with no plan and too many options. A mentor helps narrow, choose and follow through.
• A successor steps into the business and needs a steady outside voice. See mentoring for family business successors.

The full service for families is described on our next generation mentoring page.

Who engages the mentor: the family or the office?

The family is the client, and the young person always has a say. In the simplest arrangement, an adviser makes the introduction and the family engages Blackburn directly after a free intro call. If your office would like to be more involved in arranging or coordinating mentoring, raise it in an early conversation and we will be straightforward about what we can and cannot do. Either way, each engagement starts with the person being mentored and what they want to work on.

What advisers hear back, and with whose consent

• For young adults: nothing without their permission. They decide whether advisers receive updates and what those updates include.
• For high school students: a parent or guardian is always involved and receives regular progress updates. Whether advisers hear anything is the family’s call.
• What updates cover: engagement level, for example that sessions are happening as planned, and only with written consent. We do not send detailed reports, never discuss investment matters and never pass on anything shared in confidence.
• What mentors do not need: figures, holdings, trust terms or estate details.

This tends to make mentoring more effective, not less. A young adult who trusts the mentor is not reporting to the family office will be more honest about what is actually going on.

Rising generation readiness: what to look for

Advisers often sense that a young family member is not ready before anyone says it out loud. Readiness is less about financial knowledge than about everyday capability. Questions worth asking, in your own words, when a family raises a concern:

• Structure: does the young person keep a schedule without someone else enforcing it? Do they show up to commitments they made?
• Work: have they held a job with a boss who is not family, and stayed long enough to be trusted with something?
• Money habits: do they keep a budget, live within an allowance and handle their own bills and paperwork?
• Decisions: can they explain why they want something and what happens next, before they ask for funding?
• Direction: is there a next step they chose for their own reasons, rather than one the family or the trust chose for them?

Research summarized by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau finds that executive function, financial habits and decision making skills keep developing into the early twenties (CFPB, building blocks of financial capability), which is why the launch years matter so much. A mentor works on exactly these habits, week by week. For parents, our guide to raising responsible young adults in high net worth families offers a responsibility ladder from 16 to 26 and a support agreement outline you can share.

Why one-on-one rather than a group bootcamp

Group programs do things one-on-one work cannot: they build peer networks, cover a lot of material efficiently and create shared language across a family. But habits change slowly, and they change in private. One-on-one mentoring offers:

• Continuity: the same mentor every week, for months, who remembers what was promised last time.
• Specificity: goals built around this person’s life, not a curriculum.
• Follow-through: sessions weekly or several times a week, with text and phone contact between them.
• Flexibility: 60 minute sessions by video anywhere in the United States, or in person in Los Angeles.

What Blackburn does and does not do

• We do: one-on-one mentoring on work, routines, decisions, everyday money habits, relationships and purpose, with permission-based updates.
• We do not: give financial, investment, legal, tax or estate advice; deliver financial literacy curricula; provide therapy; or replace any adviser the family already has.
• We will: tell you honestly if mentoring is not the right fit for a particular young person.

If you also work with referring clinicians or schools, our hub for referring professionals and our page for educational consultants explain how those referrals work.

How to start a conversation

Call or email us to talk through a family in general terms, without names if you prefer. When the family is ready, they or the young person can take the five-minute assessment, and our team will set up a free intro call. Share our guides on preparing young adults for an inheritance and raising motivated teens with parents who want to read first.

Related

• Next generation mentoring
• Joining the family business: a checklist
• Finding direction when you do not need to work
• Mentoring for families
• Mentoring for advisors and attorneys (hub)
• For trust officers and professional trustees
• For estate planning attorneys

Common questions

Do you work with families outside Los Angeles?

Yes. Mentoring is by video anywhere in the United States, scheduled in local time, and in person in Los Angeles.

Will the mentor give financial advice?

No. Mentors work on habits, work, decisions and purpose. Financial, legal, tax and estate matters stay with the family’s advisers.

Can our office receive progress updates?

Only with written consent from the young adult, or for a high school student, from the family. Updates cover engagement level, such as whether sessions are happening as planned, not detailed reports or personal details shared in confidence.

Do you replace our next gen events?

No. One-on-one mentoring complements group programs by helping young people act on what they learned, week after week.

Get started

Want to talk through a client family in general terms? Call (888) 305 5422, email contact@blackburnmentoring.com or start with a short assessment. A member of our team reviews every assessment personally and sets up a free intro call.

Last updated November 2, 2026.