Several weeks ago I introduced the second chapter of the book in a post Fostering Human Flourishing, and am now going through each of the four spheres of transformation arising from the age-old formulation “healthy, wealthy, and wise”. This post discusses the second sphere based on “wealthy” but extended to wealth & prosperity.
This is also a huge sphere of the Transformation Economy, encompassing anything having to do with money and finances. As with health & wellbeing I provide a box of all the types of companies that lie in this sphere, including those that provide commodities, goods, services, and experiences that support transformations.
I know there are a number of subscribers in finance, so I am looking forward to what you in particular think of this post, but all paid subscribers are welcome to comment using the link at the bottom of the post.
Joe
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Wealth & Prosperity
Wealth is the domain of banks, credit unions, wealth management, and other firms that go under the general rubric of “financial service providers”. Financial firms are ostensibly in the transformation business as well, fulfilling aspirations people (and businesses) have for wealth, and especially for what wealth can do for them.
But few recognize that. They all seem to describe their offerings with the phrase “products & services”, so often pronounced as if it were one six-syllable word: “productsandservices”. All such enterprises should banish that term – as well as the phrase “financial services” – from their vocabulary, and instead recognize the value in offering financial transformations – and experiences as well, for that matter.
All financial firms seem to describe their offerings with the phrase “productsandservices”
It’s not that there aren’t “products & services” that help people acquire wealth. (Well, in fact by “products” financial firms do not mean physical goods – of which they have none – but packaged services. It’s one of the ways they self-commoditize themselves, treating their services as if they were goods.) But these lower-level offerings should be subsumed into much higher-value experiences & transformations.[i]
For people value wealth precisely because it enables most everything they want to have, benefit from, experience, and be in life. Money is a means to an end (well, for most people anyway). If financial firms ascertained and offered the ends, rather merely the means, then they would create much more economic value. The key here is to understand the why of each individual client – strike that; “client” is a service word. The proper term, again, is aspirant for those who desire transformational change. So understand the why of each individual aspirant, the reasons they desire to increase and use wealth. Such aspirations include having a new child, affording a house, renovating a home, taking an annual vacation, covering college tuition for the kids, starting a business, caring for parents, retiring, and on and on the list could go, with every aspiration as individual as the person – or family or business – desiring it.
People value wealth precisely because it enables most everything they want to have, benefit from, experience, and be in life
Now there may be no more regulated industries than banking and insurance, and wealth management can’t be far behind. If you’re in one of these industries – and if your business solely focuses on the commodity of money, then “industry” is still an appropriate term – then you probably can’t imagine how you could get around regulations in order to focus on aspirations, as more than one person has told me. Well, I’m no financial regulations expert, but I do know that if you don’t move beyond productsandservices you will eventually be commoditized and become a supplier to those who create relationships with people based on their aspirations, not their money.
Maybe you can start by creating sister firms or partner with others who can recognize your clients as aspirants and offer them the achievement of their aspirations while you focus on the wealth of your clients. I worked with one wealth management firm, for example, that partnered with Carefull, a “financial safety” fintech that works to protect people from fraud, scams, identity theft, and even their own mistakes, particularly focused on seniors. It incorporates its capabilities into the offerings of wealth advisors, banks, credit unions, and insurers, and lets them handle the relationship with clients. As Todd Rovak, CEO and co-founder, told me, “In addition to the benefit of clients who are and feel financially safe, it helps financial advisors have conversations with their clients that they never otherwise would, treating them holistically as human beings. And they include in those conversations and extend the relationship to the next generation of clients, those who do or will care for their parents, who so often go elsewhere after inheriting money.”
Of course, financial safety – I’ll also add financial stability and money management skills – provide the bare minimum for shifting to wealth transformations. Recall all the aspiration topics given above: children, homes, vacations, businesses, parents, retirement, and many more you could think of. What kinds of conversations would such topics engender, what types of goals would they elicit, and what sorts of differences would they make in gaining, managing, and growing the accounts, portfolios, and insurance that would ensure that clients aspirants would have the means to achieve their aspirations across these arenas?
And as a person who uses financial productsandservices, what would it mean to you if your banker, advisors, agent, and even your accountant treated you as a whole person rather than a portfolio of accounts? If they deeply understood your aspirations and actually partnered with you to ensure they happened?
In fact, ensure is exactly the right word to be thinking about here. The word insure means to secure payment in the event of loss, as with insurance carriers that give you money when something bad happens. It’s a financial service term. The word assure, on the other hand, means to secure confidence or trust, making you feel better. It’s a financial experience term. Ensure, however, means to secure an event, situation, or outcome and is a financial transformation term, indicating that the financial firm makes sure you achieve the aspirations for which money is again the means.
The umbrella term for beyond-money aspirations is prosperity
And the umbrella term for such beyond-money aspirations is, I believe, prosperity. In thinking about prosperity, I love the Hebrew word shalom. Its primary meaning of course is “peace”, but from Biblical times to today it’s used as a greeting or salutation to signify “Peace be upon you”. And that context includes the meaning of “well-being, tranquility, prosperity, and security, circumstances unblemished by any sort of defect”.[ii]
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Wealth & Prosperity
This sphere begins with the entirety of so-called financial “services”, including banks, credit unions, credit cards, payments, insurance, investments, brokers, wealth management, and anything else having to do with financial instruments, as well as tax planning and preparation, accounting, and real estate. In other words, basically anything that has to do with money. But not solely with money, for it provides the means to ends, and those ends are what give us human beings prosperity – anything and everything concerned with having a good life. The possibilities here are innumerable, but includes hobbies, sports, and other leisure pursuits; family, friends, and socializing; freedom, liberty, and peace. To be even shorter: prosperity is a life lived well. A life full of experiences (both economic and purely personal) that enable people to flourish.
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