Tag Archive for: wealth

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. 2

The conference call line opened up, and one by one, members of the family identified themselves. The CEO of this well-known business enterprise, now in its 3rd generation of family leadership, informed the participants that their approval was needed, and their questions expected. The topic of discussion centered around what would become one of the biggest acquisitions in the history of corporate take-overs. This call was scheduled to get buy-in from every family member in the execution of the multi-billion-dollar deal. Each one of them would need to contribute to the purchase price The eloquently phrased first question to the CEO about long-term debt came from a 13-year-old G4 member of this family. His healthy inheritance would contribute hundreds of millions towards the purchase price.

Sounds like a scene from a high stake’s drama, doesn’t it? But this call actually happened not too long ago, and the deal exponentially grew this already enormous company, ensuring that this family would breeze past the typical generational curse that tanks many family enterprises before the great-grandchildren (G4) can step into leadership. But how did a 13-year-old know enough and have enough confidence to ask such a pertinent question?

On the journey to go beyond success towards significance, making time to educate younger family members on financial literacy and wealth principles is as much a part of building a successful enterprise as picking a CEO or choosing when to expand the business. Below are four principles that successful multi-generational families embrace.

PRINCIPLE #1 – INCOME HAS LITTLE TO DO WITH WEALTH
It’s easy to look at the balance sheet and assume you’re wealthy. In this simplistic view, children of wealthy families fail to understand the important distinction between assets and liabilities. Younger generations can easily focus on the income-producing assets that drive up family valuations, but they need to also understand the impact of liabilities, and the important role that reducing high-interest debt plays in providing a clear picture of wealth. The prominence of digital tools and systems can get in the way of this understanding.

Kids growing up today have a much different relationship with money than in years past. They are more focused on mobile banking, investment apps, and an almost zero-cash lifestyle which requires little need to focus on the details or on understanding the full picture. Helping children of a family enterprise to be well-versed in concepts like debt, savings, investments, and budgets can result in the preservation of the families’ achievements. Most importantly, through a focus on key habits that lead to wealth, we teach children that it takes time, effort, and discipline to grow the bottom line.

PRINCIPLE #2 – KIDS CAN UNDERSTAND MORE THAN YOU THINK
Multi-generational families embrace an openness to discussing wealth. They don’t hesitate to talk about their business and the various components that have led to their success. They also don’t shy away from exposing their children to the challenges and the inner workings of how the family built their worth. They invite their kids to sit in on business calls, encourage them to ask questions during shareholder updates, and celebrate ideas that might lead to product or process innovations.

Forward-thinking families teach their children the importance of building long-term financial stability through deliberate actions. They make sure their kids consider the various costs of running the business and invite them to take on personal responsibility through contributions to the family legacy. To cement these lessons, children of successful wealthy families are exposed at an early age to how investments work, and how to read financial documents, including the monthly balance sheets. They learn what to look for in the markets, the differences between liquid savings, stocks, mutual funds, real estate, and property, and how to understand a myriad of other wealth-building vehicles. They are exposed to business processes and decision-making approaches.

The underlying lesson that is reinforced throughout childhood is the idea that wealth-building requires knowledge, commitment, and good judgment. This often means postponing personal needs and controlling reactive urges.

PRINCIPLE #3 – GENEROSITY LEADS TO PROSPERITY
Helping those that are less fortunate or supporting causes for which you are passionate about is another key principle taught to children of families seeking significance on their wealth journey. Of course, from a wealth management perspective, they learn that charitable contributions are helpful when it comes to tax time since they help reduce taxable income. However, today’s younger generations tend to get more excited when they are reminded that supporting causes with a personal connection can lead to great satisfaction while positively impacting the world around them.

Exposing kids to the charitable endeavors the family supports, and modeling for them early on how to join in with their own time and money, will make sure that they recognize that wealth is about so much more than just a lot of money in the bank.

PRINCIPAL #4 – WEALTH IS ABOUT MORE THAN MONEY
Most people automatically associate wealth with money. The bigger their bank account, the wealthier they think they are. What sets accomplished multi-generational families apart is an understanding that wealth is about the freedom to maximize your time, talents, relationships, and faith. Making sure that children and grandchildren appreciate the full capacity of a well-lived life allows them to experience true wealth that contributes towards a long-lasting legacy.

Multi-generational families center themselves on living the fully engaged life that wealth enables, including making significant contributions to their communities. Children of generative families learn early on that success is the result of consistent action.

At Mosaic Family Wealth, we work with families that are looking to go beyond success towards significance. Our family office team can offer investment oversight, financial reporting, guidance on securing a long-term financial future, as well as providing insights on how to weigh important family decisions. We can also support your efforts at educating younger generations about responsible wealth management, business competence, and stepping into a role that extends the families’ generational impact.

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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.