My mission is to help 80 households be more generous over their lifetime. And that’s it.
What’s a household? Partly it’s a way for me to measure how many people I’m helping. So it’s a family, a unit, it could be a husband and wife and their kids. Or, it could be an individual whose committed to the process of working together to make wise financial decisions.
Why just 80 clients? There’s not a lot of science that goes into it for me. It’s a feel but also an understanding of my capacity. I want to give my full attention to my clients when they need it. I know I can do that with 80. So I’m capping it there. At least, that’s my conviction now.
I also believe there will be enough of a ripple effect with 80 committed clients working together for the next 5, 10, 15, 20+ years, that I’ll have plenty of reasons to feel like I made enough of a difference in enough people’s lives. Plus, it takes a long time to work one-on-one with clients to get clear on their goals, values, and action items. Then, there’s course corrections that happen as life happens. To do quality work, at some point you have to limit the quantity of work. Unless of course you’re building a corporate empire to scale, which I am not.
Why the focus on generosity? Of course there’s more that goes into a financial plan than being generous, but for me, that’s where all roads have to end up if I’m doing my job properly.
Let’s take retirement, for example. Why do people want to retire? Well, there’s an infinite number of reasons, but there are a few main reasons. For some people it’s to rest, for others it’s to get away, for some it’s to spend time with family, and yet for others it’s to do whatever they want whenever want. My thing is that retirement ought to be more of a change towards something rather than an end in and of itself. And, I think the way to get it to be a change towards something new, is to have a reason outside of just making yourself more comfortable. Comfort is important, but at some point you max out on comfort. Then what? That’s where generosity comes in. I think we’re more fulfilled when we have an aim that involves giving something to someone else without expecting payback in return. To me, there’s an endless amount of financial planning work to be done in 80 households’ lives to maximize the generosity in each one, and thus the positive impact all around the world.
Also, I feel that almost nobody has someone in their life challenging them to be more generous, nor teaching them wise financial principles to get to the point where they feel like they have “enough” or even “extra.” For the most part, no one talks about their money at all to anybody, let alone their closest family or friends. And it would be far too risky to tell someone what you think they should do with their money. So, that’s where my calling comes in. I’m not telling people what to do with their money, rather I’m coming along side my clients to provide a personal financial framework, and a template to guide them in getting the most out of what they have.
