Explaining the Concept of Total Wealth

Total wealth is much more than just your financial assets. Financial assets are very much the basis of pillars you can build that create your total wealth. In a family enterprise, I think it’s very important that various pillars are looked at. When we do our estate planning, for example, we very much focus on the financial assets and I think lots of the proverbial sayings, lots of the statistics come because we don’t look at the human asset. A foundation being your financial assets; there’s your intellectual assets which is very much all the knowledge, all the stories, the history that you have that you can pass on to your next generation. What I call family, some people call the spiritual assets, which is the together that you have within your family. The values that you share and pass on to your next generation. It is very important to build what is to come, especially in a transition. A third pillar is your social asset, which often includes philanthropy; how are you connected to your community, who do you bring together as you do philanthropy, helping others. This is very important. In the gathering, in the values in what it is you believe in as a family. The fourth, which I think is a very important one, is the human asset. The well-being of each individual within your family. Collectively, you work much stronger together, moving forward than individually, without that community of your individual family members being together. Therefore, human assets being very important.