NIA | Purpose - Purpose Driven Investing

 What is your Purpose? I've heard the best inventors, investors, musicians, and operators in the world are driven almost to madness to achieve their mission or purpose. If you recall my post of Netflix movies, you'll find a show called "Mindhunters". This show follows the development of the FBI's first behavioral analysis unit. No disrespect to local law enforcement, but it helped them stop guessing and use clues from the crime scene to narrow down a subject based on their behavior. One of the key persons in the show was an academic that first assisted the FBI as this unit was being developed. What stuck with me was she said after years of interviewing and analyzing people, CEOs and Politicians often have similar traits to the psychopaths they were tracking, interviewing, and studying. So a subtle reminder to be careful in your purpose driven mission because it's a thin line between helping people and filling your self-interest bucket.

So on day 5 of Kwanzaa I challenge you to find your purpose by finding ways to serve. The inventors who solve society's problems are celebrated. Facebook is my rolodex to everyone in my life before their were cell phones (I know imagine there was a time without cell phones). And what a compromise, I hate their data privacy practices but occasionally log on so I no longer have to keep a spreadsheet of my contacts (yes years back I kept a spreadsheet). Today my buddies on Wall Street are falling over themselves for ESG Investing. ESG is short for environmental, social, and corporate governance. So you mean the smartest nation in the world just NOW realized that we should be interested in preserving our planet, social justice and diversity issues, and ensuring that those CEOs who use their power to have relationships with their subordinates maintain good corporate governance. Wow it's 2020 and I need my billionaire friends on Wall Street telling me that ESG is in vogue and now is the time to move away from coal and eventually transition to electric, wind, hydrogen, and other solutions. I need my billionaire buddies to tell me its time to measure how many people of color and women are employed at some of the largest companies in the world AND more importantly how many of those persons are in senior management and C-Suite roles (positions of real power). It's hard for me to take them seriously because I see historically what I saw with colonialism. You stayed with strategies (slavery, coal, colonization, globalization) until they served your "purpose"...and then you peaced out.

So for me my overriding purpose is to serve by teaching those how I continue to build my core, my pillars. Being independent, able to strategically think on my own, able to complete in any setting in any part of the world means I am not easily influenced. We all have obstacles:

• When my last employer couldn't support the need for me to take care of an elderly parent in their golden years -- my approach allowed me to leave
• When I was told not to purchase a home on the South Side of Chicago - my purpose was public/private, a play on doing something that was good for me and my community. My home will double in price soon as I bought during the depths of recession (buy low, sell high) and I assisted in stabilizing my community
• When I first started as an independent contractor people told me I needed the safety of Corporate America -- haha I remembered laughing often and telling people companies stopped offering pensions decades ago. My CEO buddies come on CNBC and speak everyday and must hit quarterly earnings targets. Let's just say, they'll do what they have to make the numbers. I'm not concerned because with my dedication to my craft and 3 certifications, I have the confidence that I will be one of the few left standing --- but am I describing a job or the cutthroat show "Survivor". So I struck out on my own, negotiated deals in my favor, and actually stumbled into the best of both worlds. I have both a Corp job and a startup...funny thing is my client asked me to come on full-time...not me.

My startup company is to invest in people that are underrepresented in Corporate America so we can get them in the door. Next, I plan to invest in real estate for persons that usually get the worst housing selections because no one there isn't much choice for low-income Americans. I also want to create a hedge fund or wealth advisory/family office firm in the next 5-7 years. They don't know it but my mentors: Peter Lynch, Warren Buffet, Cathie Woods, Mario Gabelli, Seth Klarman, John Rogers and a few others have dropped enough nuggets over the years that my investing portfolio is achieving it's purpose - giving me an opportunity to retire early, invest in other projects, and donate to worthy causes.

So I challenge you to define your NIA, and together let's serve with a purpose by investing in our community and the world. God bless 

Stock Update: Today I am employing Tax Loss Harvesting. If you had a big year, many wins in your portfolio...did you know that yes the tax code allows you to sell losers in your portfolio and they offset the gains. You can carry a loss of $3K into the next tax year, no fear the government is here. But imagine that, most middle class Americans can't take advantage of this because they don't own stocks or manage their own portfolios.