The journey we have taken to offer holistic wealth management advice revolves around one core commitment – the commitment to ‘redefining wealth’.
Traditional wealth management can take your funds and grow them. The numbers in your bank account will (hopefully) increase, your asset portfolio should grow, and you’ll be supported to make shrewd financial decisions.
But there are so many more important elements to life that are inextricably tied up with your wealth and the decisions you make about it – and these get overlooked when you see your wealth purely in terms of money.
Real wealth is freedom. Wealth is having the luxury of choice when it comes to how you spend your retirement years. Wealth is having time to spend and connect with your family by cutting down the hours you need to work. Wealth is knowing that the business you built from the ground up will continue to operate in a way that protects your legacy – and your personal code – after you’ve exited the corporation. Wealth is liberating assets at the right time so you can help your children and your grandchildren while you’re still alive, and help them get their own secure footing in life.
We’ve witnessed many times over the years the failure of conventional wealth management advice to look after these crucial aspects of our lives, to take into consideration the deeper goals that lead your client towards a meaningful, truly satisfying version of success.
A Merrill Lynch study from 2019 looked into changing perspectives on legacy, and found that 69% of those surveyed wanted to be remembered for memories shared with their loved ones as well as a financial inheritance. We believe that wealth is a creative tool for shaping the life you really want to live – and that strategic financial planning combined with a balanced, human set of priorities results in a life filled with possibility. This is about making your wealth work for you, to build a life where you have the time and the resources to make those memories.
The world is changing – and the need for purpose, security, and the ability to create a positive impact is only going to grow. We see so many clients coming through the door with established careers and businesses – yet they’re not on track to the life they truly desire. So many of us are overworked, overwhelmed – it’s so easy to let the years slip by without mustering the energy for change it takes to steer your ship in a new direction. We want to help people take a pause – to have the moments in time and clarity of thinking necessary to design and plan out the life they actually want, and use their wealth as a tool to make it happen.
After countless in-depth summits with our clients where we support them to investigate what real wealth looks like in their lives and the future they’re aiming to create, we have considered deeply the overarching themes that come up again and again for our clients, the things that weigh on their minds at night and that they want to get right before they die.
We call these our Wealth Pillars.
When we talk with our clients about the experience of life they want to have, it always comes down to one of these core pillars: legacy, family, income, wellbeing, and lifestyle. These are the areas of life that contain our dreams and visions for the future. To us, ‘redefining wealth’ is all about supporting you to understand which of these pillars is your greatest priority, and helping you create a life plan that protects and nurtures what you hold most dear.
Our take on wealth management is holistic, and ambitious. A few years ago we were surrounded by businesses and individuals that had everything going for them – but they just weren’t on track to achieving what they set out to by operating within the standard paradigm. Business and wealth operate within the context of real life – that means your emotions, your health, your mental health, your family, global affairs, personal tragedies, your aspirations and your limitations. These are the human factors that weave in and out of our wealth picture – but are commonly overlooked when we discuss our financial affairs with professional advisors.
The first conversation we have with our clients is where we invite them to ‘redefine wealth’. It’s certainly a unique style of wealth management consultation, because we’re asking questions about the big vision our client has for their future that would make everything they’re doing right now feel worth it. Try this thought exercise – what does your ideal future look like when you close your eyes? Are you on track to actually get there, or does it currently exist as a pleasant thought until you start to feel anxiety about achieving it? Could it become a tangible, living breathing reality that you created for yourself because you made some strategic, well-planned decisions while there was still time?
The truth is that most of our new clients are so pressed for the time and space to think – they don’t have the spare mental energy to create such a rounded, scoped out plan for their life. The beauty of what we do is that we create that time – time to think big picture, time to ponder what really matters when it comes down to it, and create a wealth management plan that makes it all happen.
As they say, you can’t take money with you. But what you can do is use your wealth as a creative tool – a medium to create a lifestyle that fills your days with enjoyment and meaning, to create purposeful businesses and enterprises that leave a lasting impact, and to create resources and trusts that protect your family and your legacy.
