Falcon’s Muse

Over a year ago, when I started this journey through capitalism, my friend Michael asked me a very simple question. How do you define wealth?

Seemingly, how I defined wealth would color my journey and the financial markers I sought along the way. Though I promised him to post on the meaning of wealth, it’s taken me nearly a year to grapple with the idea.

Of course, I began with a simple definition from the dictionary: an abundance of valuable resources. Simple, easy to understand, but didn’t resonate with me completely.

Then I turned to the economists view of “wealth.” Of course, it involved conceptual notions of “continuously adding value” and “making your money work for you.” Less straightforward, and quite frankly, sounded like a pretty empty and bullshit viewpoint of wealth.

Then last week, I happened upon a very poignant definition: wealth is the ability to choose what you want to do when you want to do it. I think some of us may call that freedom.

Suddenly, this set off bells in my mind. Afterall, isn’t that what we’re really striving for – freedom? Wealth in and of itself cannot be standardized. Your idea of wealthy and mine could be vastly different. $100 to you and $100 to me may have very different impacts on our lives and psyches. But isn’t what we’re all striving for is to have more choice – because choice means freedom and freedom means peace of mind.

I know I’m getting lofty here but in my experience the more financial freedom I have, the more peace of mind I have. That being said, I am not sure of one person who feels completely free of their finances, save for maybe the Dalai Lama – but bodhisattvas are few and far between.

So now when I pursue my wealth, really what I strive for is my financial freedom. – to achieve a certain economic level that affords me my ideal lifestyle. And the critical part of financial freedom is that once I hit this mark, then I must let go. Any financial success after that is gravy…not an invitation to keep moving the target.

Recently, in my evergrowing fascination with alternative medicine, I came upon a naturopathic doctor’s website. In big bold letters, she posted the phrase “First Do No Harm, ” every true healers’ creed. It made me wonder how the world would transform if this same philosophy took hold in the financial sector? I particularly felt compelled to offer this question out there after reading a recent article on Huffington Post about Goldman Sachs’ adviser saying that we have to “tolerate” financial inequity and billion dollar bonuses in order to create prosperity for all. Hmmm…we bailed your asses out and you get to fly your jet to the French Riviera. Can someone help me understand how that makes you and me prosperous?

So this brings me back to my original premise, what if the business and financial sector approached opportunities by first doing no harm. Anyone ever heard of Google? Granted, of their 10 philosopies, “doing no evil” is down at number 6 but still, obviously doing no evil has made them at least a tad successful.

As I progress in building my business, and developing a network of social entrepreneurs under my firm’s umbrella, I’m moved more and more to work on projects who at least implicitly, if not explicitly, view economic opportunities as only viable when first they do no harm.

My apologies for the delinquent blog posting. I’ve been working on a client site that leaves me little time for my regular blogging. But have no fear, I’ve been making a list of the topics I want to discuss with you.

Let’s talk a little about personal finance. I’ve always considered myself a decent “budgeter.” I generally know how much is in my bank account and how much I’m spending on any given day in the month. I generally know if something is affordable to me or not. That being said, on the 12th of every month when my bill arrives, I’m left there wondering, “What the heck do I spend my money on that adds up so fast?” If I could identify this spending, then perhaps I could see how I might be more efficient.

Enter mint.com. Mint.com is a money management website that allows you to enter in your basic financial data. The site helps you monitor your finances on a daily basis and will send you weekly summaries of your financial health.

I’m not necessarily endorsing the site and I have not received any solicitations from them, but I was recently turned on to them and thought I would try it out. So far, it’s been interesting to see my money health in one location – a snapshot of my bad habits helping to hold me accountable. I see that I spend a fair amount of money on food. My weakness, I know.

Since we’re all here to build our wealth, I wanted to pass this site on to you because perhaps getting intimate with our personal finances is part of the deal of building financial wealth. Would love to hear your thoughts about the site…

Last night, my husband and I resumed our Friday date night after taking a brief hiatus given summer’s subtle way of creeping into routine. We went to watch Julie & Julia and I suddenly felt very guilty for not staying on top of my blogging. So here I am again…

Having built my business slowly over the past 12 months, I’m comfortable knowing that I’ve garnered some stability with my income, which if we remember was one of my first goals. With this fairly new stability, I want to make an effort to sock some of it away for a rainy day, aka retirement and down payment on a house.

I recently came upon a blog post at Ramit’s site that to me offered a very reasonable financial model on how to set up savings and retirement accounts. To me, it offers at least a baseline from which to build.

Last Monday, I spent a couple hours going through our finances, setting up some of the calculations found in Ramit’s chart in an Excel spreadsheet and figuring out how we can save up through the end of 2009. After analyzing the figures, I realized I needed to set up a SEP IRA (Self-Employed IRA account) so I could begin building my retirement. Additionally, I set up a few extra accounts with ING Direct to allow us to separate money into our general savings account and our house down payment account. Suddenly, practical, boring things became very exciting and moreover, empowering. The exercise of habitually earmarking money for our dreams felt inspiring.

On a more woo-woo note…

Harpal and I both believe in the power of intention and so spend a few minutes each night before we go to sleep declaring our most pressing intentions. Generally, it takes the form of each of us stating 3 times the following sentence while we are calm and clear-headed with focused intent and humble gratitude…

“I intend, that on or before [insert date here], regardless of the evidence, that I/we will be [insert intention here].”

So for example, the sentence may take this form: “I intend, that on or before August 30, 2009, regardless of the evidence, I will be bringing in a consistent monthly net income of $10,000.” At the very least, declaring your intention gets you clear about what’s most important to you and how to focus your time and energy. On a more esoteric level, you set yourself up for the Universe to conspire with you to manifest your heart’s desire.

Towards the end of July, I began to get frustrated at the inconsistency of business so we decided to change it together by declaring the amount of consistent, combined income we wanted and we set the date as August 30, 2009. On August 20, I got a new client that enabled us to meet our goal through the end of the year.

I leave you with that. In case you are willing to try, in case you are willing to lose nothing and potentially set the stage for a miraculously abundant life.

For the past few weeks, I’ve immersed myself in the topic and world of social entrepreneurship. To me, social entrepreneurship comes in the form of profit and positive social impact. I keep thinking that this has somehow become a life’s mission – to prove, perhaps even to myself, that economic success can go hand-in-hand with social justice, that empathy and profitability are not mutually exclusive ideals.

I’ve been reading a lot about the main three market sectors – government, profit, and non-profit. The reason many of us espouse the idea of for-profit social entrepreneurship is because of its ability to be scalable – which translates into having the unique ability of having the largest impact. Thankfully, I continue to meet more and more entrepreneurs everyday who aim to make a big whopping difference in the world.

Last Friday, I had the chance to sit down with the CEO of WaterHealth International, Dr. Tralance Addy. Dr. Addy and I shared a cup of coffee and I got to listen to his remarkable story. A Ghanaian by birth and a learned man who felt a calling to apply his years of business knowledge taking care of a severe social and market failure – clean water. I am inspired by his vision and that of the scientist who invented the technology, Dr. Ashok Gadgil. I even had the chance to exchange a few emails with Dr. Gadgil and learn of his other socially-conscious ventures. Humbling. Really, really humbling.

More than anything, I feel motivated to continue meeting these innovators and create my law firm as an umbrella for cutting-edge thinkers and doers of social entrepreneurship.

I had the joy of waking this Sunday morning gently and peacefully. Never having enough time to indulge in reading my magazines, I stayed in bed a little longer and snuggled up with the latest issue of Inc. There’s a feature on Paul Graham of Y-Combinator and I was struck by a couple things. The writer remarked about how most entrepreneurs are extremely intelligent and at least mildly arrogant. Fair enough. In order to take the risks necessary to start a business, you need to feel fairly confident and perhaps a little delusional, which often accompanies arrogance.

The second thing that struck me was a photo spread where Graham picked 15 of his favorite founders he funded. And guess what, all of them were men. This comment is not meant to diminish Graham or his founders, but still, it made me a little sad and a little pissed to see not one woman in that picture. It also made me wonder why women feel absent from certain types of innovation.

Quiet Sunday mornings offer me the space to wander in my mind. And sometimes when I wander, I go back in time. It occurred to me this morning that I’ve come a long way from the girl living in an Ivory Tower in San Francisco. It also occurred to me that there was no way a girl who likes to read Inc. magazine on a Sunday morning would have survived in an Ivory Tower. I have too much curiosity and perhaps just enough arrogance to succeed at a few things other than looking good in a cocktail dress and shopping in Union Square – heck, I might have just enough gusto to succeed at starting a few business ventures.

People often talk about the “entrepreneurial spirit” – and words that quickly follow are risk-taker, free-spirit, adventurer. But I would also like to add resilient and thick-skinned. Entrepreneurs are the folks we know who are willing to take giant leaps of faith but more uniquely, they are excited to do it over and over and over again – even in the face of dooming stats of failure.

Recently I was sipping some cocktails with Harpal and our friends, Dave and Ellie. In the midst of our conversation, I had a sudden idea for a business that seemed fool-proof and profitable. When I came home and started researching, I realized that no one else had thought of the idea. The only thing was that it involved writing computer software potentially and that is an arena I know NOTHING about.

So I called up my cousin yesterday who’s a computer whiz kid and told him my idea. We talked about the necessary technology to get this idea off the ground and running. Turns out, from a software perspective, my idea is not fully developed. And funny enough, my cousin apologized for not having more good news.

I wasn’t bothered in the least. To get one great idea, you have to burn through a ton of not so good ideas and even some bad ideas. I’m convinced of that. No one was an overnight success. No one.

So with that, I’m back to the drawing board. What I definitely know is that I want to develop a products-based business as my time is already spent pretty heavily on my two service-oriented businesses. And I’d like my product to fill a void enhancing lifestyles in this busy world in which we live. So more work to be done, but I’m excited that my ideas get laughed at a little less each time.

There are many things I take for granted, not the least of which is a steady flow of electricity. It affords me productivity and comfort, and when you ask city engineers, it also affords me clean water and waste management. In effect, access to power is access to dignity in the way we live.

Last month, I had the fortune to attend REEM 09, a San Francisco-based conference on renewable energy in emerging markets. We visited solar installation sites and spent two days discussing the various opportunities and issues with bringing energy to places in Africa, the Caribbean, and Latin America, both urban and rural. And it got me thinking.

Can entrepreneurship offer something more than access to the bottom line? It’s been said before, but I’ll say it again. It can offer us access to something worth just as much, or even more – access to our compassion and self-worth.

Most entrepreneurs will readily describe themselves as “risk-takers,” but more and more, entrepreneurs are wondering how to translate that ability to take risks and help foster social justice – clean water, access to healthy living. It was the undercurrent of the REEM conference, the focus of my law practice, and the clients I serve as well. This spirit is infused into what entrepreneurs of this breed call the “double bottom-line” – finding profit and social responsibility simultaneously. One company I was introduced to recently by my friend, Neal, is TOMS Shoes. You’ve probably seen the AT&T commercial about Blake Mycoskie traveling the world handing out shoes to children in need for every pair of shoes he sold for profit. There’s a whole generation of children being touched by his work as he continues to build his business and make entrepreneurial history. Inspiring. Social entrepreneurship is lighting the way.

I’ve been busy building my business the last 6 weeks. I’m happy to say that since February, I’ve officially added five new clients to my roster, and four of them are targeted, socially conscious entrepreneurs. (Check out Opportunity Green, EcoTuesday, Pink Cloud Events, and Heather Benjamin Jewelry.) It feels good to be helping people who are helping people. It also feels good to know that these clients make the zen foundation of my legal and strategy practice. The icing on the cake is that it is a joy to come up to my cozy, little office to draft contracts and write up stock option plans.

If you can picture my desk, it’s nothing fancy. Just a simple tabletop from Ikea with a desk lamp, a buddha statue and a candle I generally light right around 6pm. The buddha also holds a clear crystal gifted to me by my very first client, Cloud Nine Yoga (now officially Cloud Nine Yoga, LLC).

I wish I could tell you that this month has been as Zen as my last paragraph portrays it to have been (not to mention the photo my hubby and I took in Thailand a year ago)! But the truth of it is that my desk gets messy and stays so more often than not. I’ve spent more hours than I care to mention of the last 45 days banging my head against a wall while trying to understand the accounting principals of running a business through Quickbooks. I generally walk through my days with the running whipser of a thought of “where will I find my next client?” floating around in my head. And to top it all off, I’ve stopped drinking to “cleanse my body” – perhaps also courtesy of my eco-friendly, body-mind-spirit clientele.

All that being said, I must say that I end my days feeling rested and satisfied knowing I did my best doing something I love. That each day, I spend some amount of time working on my creative pursuits, including a new dance album. And really, for the first time in my life, I am viscerally aware of how surrendering more and more to what is present in your life actually puts you more and more in charge of where you end up.

Here’s where I am: building a business, building a family, creating a new album, and preparing for the next phase in my life: setting up my retirement and buying a home. Slowly, I’ve started to learn the about individual health insurance (what a racket that is), the advantages of a SEP IRA, and understanding more about personal finance – part and parcel of becoming a millionaire. My new friend, Colin, tipped me off to Ramit Sethi who promises to teach you how to be rich – through personal finance. I’ve just started poking around his blog, but wanted to pass it along to you. (Thanks, Colin!)

In the meantime, remember to keep saving away a little bit of money every paycheck and remember too to give to others when you can. The universe hates a vacuum. The more you give, the more you will get.