Tag Archive for: Legacy

4 Profitable Ways to Invest Your Time

One of the most valued benefits of a successful life is the ability to control your time. Dedicating yourself to endeavors of your choosing can lead to long-term impact and help shape a lasting legacy as you move from success to significance.

Here are four ways you can invest your time that are worth considering:

#1: Join A Board – On your path to financial success, you have likely engaged with a variety of boards working to impact wide-ranging social issues. As a result, you can call to mind those that functioned healthily and those that struggled to find their footing. Imagine the impact a seasoned business leader can offer to the success of a board’s mission? Individuals who know how to see success and can contribute insights and experience to help an organization achieve its goals are highly sought after.

Investing your time on a board is a meaningful way to leverage your professional knowledge towards a cause that is meaningful to you. Your success will be tangibly seen at both an individual level through people’s lives changed and organizationally as your time investment turns into organizational impact. In addition to contributing towards an important cause, board service often yields valuable networking opportunities as well. Amplify your voice and thus your significance using the lessons learned across a successful career to make a difference in the world around you.

When considering investing time in a board, consider these options:

  • Local boards are often seeking seasoned guidance from professionals across various industries to help them move to the next stage. Serving a term in a cause-related group will elevate their output and deliver meaningful value back to you.
  • Thriving national or global organizations might afford you an opportunity to widen your circle of influence while benefitting from the fresh perspective you can provide.

#2: Higher Education Speaking – We all have people that have inspired us. You likely can recall a moment when someone shared something publicly in a way that ignited a lasting effect. For many, this experience happens at the collegiate level, with a lecture or course that alters your life trajectory. Universities are constantly looking for professionals that can fill speaking slots that will serve to inspire their students.

Taking a speaking role at a college or university is a terrific way to offer a glimpse into the expertise that led to your personal success. It’s an ideal way to not only invest your time but create a legacy. You might consider visiting your alma mater to offer a keynote speech or sharing a guest-lecture series on a topic on which you are an expert. Public speaking of this type allows you to summarize your vast experience in a memorable narrative with potent takeaways most professors would love to showcase in their classes or schools would like to offer to their student body. The lessons learned along your path to success, including roadblocks and failures, can serve as a clear inspiration for those just beginning their journey.

When considering investing your time through public speaking at a university consider the following:

  • Identify a university or academic institution where you might already have a connection – your alma mater or a one where you have previously invested financially for example.
  • Develop a lecture or a speech around key lessons learned along your path to success, and make sure to include plenty of stories that bring those lessons to life.

#3: Champion an Event – Invitations to charities, auctions, and galas are par for the course for successful individuals. Unfortunately, they’re not all organized with the same level of passion, quality or value add for those that attend. Imagine leveraging your time towards helping to guide a charity event of some sort into the kind of opportunity that would most appeal to yourself and your peers.

Serving as a committee chair can allow you to use your unique points of view to help an organization meet its goals in the most impactful way possible. Likely, you have access to a trusted network that will take your meeting or call, support with their expertise, or even contribute specific assets, solely because you are involved. Like starting a non-profit, begin by clarifying your role to ensure your time spent offers maximum impact while allowing others to take on tasks more aligned to their expertise.

When considering investing your time by championing an event, consider the following:

  • Personal alignment with the event goal will be the key to true personal significance and satisfaction.
  • Choose an event or organization that allows you to wholeheartedly get involved.

#4 Go One-on-One – Big plays can offer big rewards, but sometimes an even greater difference can be made as you invest your time more individually. You most likely have someone or a select number of people in your life who you credit with guiding you at some level during a crucial point on your path towards success. As you consider how to invest your time, choosing to mentor someone or simply spending time offering guidance is an investment that may lead to possibly the greatest personal significance.

Like the person who saw the spark of success in you, choosing the right person with whom to invest your time is essential. Many people will likely be desirous of your time, opinion, and connections, but few should receive it. Consider investing in a person already on a path toward success but in need of guidance. Your personal experience and success can offer valuable wisdom that can’t be found in other ways.

When considering investing your time with mentoring, consider the following:

  • Intentionally structure time with the person you are mentoring so that your investment pays dividends in actions and opportunities.
  • Consider the amount of time you are willing to invest. Mentors are often sought out in greater frequency in pivotal times along a person’s career journey. Make sure to be clear about the amount of time you can commit.

You’ve worked hard to take control of your calendar, now allow that freedom to give you a more meaningful return as you invest in purposeful opportunities. Wisely investing your time allows you to take your personal success and transform it into lasting significance.

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Please note that nothing in this content should be construed as an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to purchase an interest in any security or separate account. Nothing in this content is intended to be, and you should not consider anything in this content to be, investment, accounting, tax, or legal advice. If you would like investment, accounting, tax, or legal advice, you should consult with your own accountants or attorneys regarding your individual circumstances and needs.

Mosaic Family Wealth, LLC is a Registered Investment Adviser. Advisory services are only offered to clients or prospective clients where Mosaic Family Wealth, LLC and its representatives are properly licensed or exempt from licensure.

Generational Impact, Pt. 1

Delicious jams, jellies, and preserves instantly come to mind when many of us hear, “with a name like Smucker’s, it has to be good.” This famous slogan has made the brand a household name. But what should really catch your attention is the unique position this company holds as one of the few privately held corporations that still has family leadership five generations after first launching. The J.M. Smucker Co is currently run by Mark T. Smucker, the great-great-grandson of the founder who launched the company in 1897. Most family businesses rarely make it past the third generation.

Smucker’s first launched its “beloved brands” in Orrville, Ohio from the back of a horse-drawn wagon. Today its diverse portfolio generates billions in revenue and hundreds of millions in profits. Despite an ever-expanding product line-up, the last name has remained consistent in the chief executive’s office —J.M. Smucker (1897-1947), his son Willard Smucker (1948-60), his son Paul Smucker (1961-87), brothers Timothy and Richard Smucker (2011-2019), and now Tim’s son, Mark Smucker. Another consistent factor throughout the history of this American success story has been a clear family commitment towards building a long-term legacy.

The Smucker’s understood early on the importance of developing a set of shared values. This is a major key when it comes to having an impact as a successful multi-generational family. Making sure that heirs are aware, engaged, and committed to shared values is crucial when preserving the success of the family enterprise from generation to generation. For over 100 years, the Mars family, among the wealthiest in the world, has also managed to build and preserve an incredibly successful family empire, with well-known brands like M&Ms, Snickers, and Pedigree. As they enter their fifth generation of family business ownership, they attribute much of their success to a commitment to their well-publicized “Five Principles”: quality, responsibility, mutuality, efficiency, and freedom. All family members, not to mention every one of their 70,000+ employees, are required to know and understand these principles which impact every decision made by the company. The family regularly discusses and engages in meetings and training revolving around the principles, ensuring that they are a foundational element driving their company’s vision and fueling longevity.

Many family-owned businesses begin with a bit of secrecy or reticence to share information. Founders often struggle to be open & transparent with the rest of the family. The sooner you can release some of that control and engage younger generations, often labeled simply G2 or G3 based on how far they are removed from the founder, the more likely it is that the family continues to hold onto the business and the potential for significance. This is another key for generational impact. It’s important to make sure that siblings and cousins are knowledgeable about key business information, agreements, processes, and major deals. Making sure that family members can read and understand business plans and financial documents allow everyone to have ownership of the ups and downs of the company. Training in how to read profit and loss statements, understanding supply chains, or how to develop pricing structures, among other business skillsets, makes it more likely that family members in G4, G5, and beyond will be ready to step in willingly when needed and add value right away.

Successful multi-generational family endeavors also share a commitment to make it about the business as early as possible. To continue having an incremental impact, eventually, wealthy families must prioritize the needs of their business above the focus on individual family member opportunities. This may require hiring more experienced, non-family talent to run the business, develop products or expand service offerings. Leadership positions for family members should not be assumed but earned. Developing professional outlooks, financial discernment, and skills in the management of large business enterprises early on reduced family member tensions as everyone will be focused on the outcome that offers maximum value.

Generative family enterprises extend their legacy when individual members develop different skill sets and business experiences outside of the core business they grow up experiencing. In addition to networks that are built, encouraging outside interests, studies, and jobs provides a broader set of insights that can be applied towards the success of the family business. Often, this is where multi-generational families begin to really shape their expanded social, relational, and spiritual capital.

At Mosaic Family Wealth, we work with multi-generational families that are hoping to establish the kind of legacy that is exemplified by the Smucker’s and the Mars family. Our team works with clients on the various aspects of managing a successful family office, from investment oversight to financial reporting, outlining steps to help you secure your long-term financial future, as well as providing insights on how to weigh important family decisions. Our experienced team can support your efforts at teaching younger generations about responsible wealth management, business competence, and dealing with expanding families and their role in the business.

Stay tuned for part two of our Generational Impact series where we will focus on specific wealth-related topics younger generations should master early on.

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Please note that nothing in this content should be construed as an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to purchase an interest in any security or separate account. Nothing in this content is intended to be, and you should not consider anything in this content to be, investment, accounting, tax, or legal advice. If you would like investment, accounting, tax, or legal advice, you should consult with your own accountants or attorneys regarding your individual circumstances and needs.

Mosaic Family Wealth, LLC is a Registered Investment Adviser. Advisory services are only offered to clients or prospective clients where Mosaic Family Wealth, LLC and its representatives are properly licensed or exempt from licensure.