All that we have done, are doing, or will do, is based upon 1 common element. PEOPLE!
Our business, your business, me, you, us, our team, all represent our “Internal people.”
WE ARE our Human Resources. We are HUMAN CAPITAL to one another.
Those we serve – our clients, networking partners, government agencies, our community – they represent our “external people”: Our market, our partners in service, our friends, our family. All of these are also our HUMAN CAPITAL. Of course, external people are also made up of competitors; some people who may challenge our existence, or wish to harm us. So, just as there is risk in monetary investing, there is risk in “raising and utilizing” our Human Capital.
As people, we seek a good life which includes a higher quality of life, time to pursue personal interests, enough money to support our lives, education, children, house, and retirement. These desires represent our goals. If we are going to achieve our goals, we must employ our capital (internal and external people) wisely.
Many people accelerate the achievement of their goals by pursuing something called a CAREER. This is just another strategy for “investing” our time in pursuit of a secure, consistent, focused job that will give us a higher return (quality of life, money) on our investment (time, education). Or, put another way, by using a career model, we will submit ourselves to working more closely with people so that we can spend less time to achieve our return (quality of life, money). To reduce it to numbers, if you earn $50 on $1,000 in a year, you made a 5% return. But if you make the same $50 in just 6 months, you made a 10% return (a higher quality of life) more quickly. So in theory, developing a CAREER, allows us to work smarter not harder to achieve our goals (higher quality of life).
Make no mistake, we are all investors. But I believe the most wise investment we will ever make in our lives, is in the form of “Human Capital.” We ALL already possess it! Our relationships of all kinds, but especially those relationships with whom we interact on a daily or very regular basis creates the greatest potential for investment. If we “invest” time and effort in working with the stock market, we have an expectation of making a “spot or long term profit.” So what would we expect from the “investment” of our time and effort in one another? To profit through the additional development of greater levels of our “human capital.” A reinvestment of profits if you will. I maintain that our future will profit to a level that far exceeds the profit (if a profit at all) in regular financial investing. I believe that if we invest our time in dealing with people, for people, both internally and externally, to enhance our careers, we will achieve our goals more quickly, and hopefully more easily.
Our investment in our Internal people takes the form of team building, training, RAFTS, processes, mentor-ship, management assistance, and leadership. By investing our time in people and in one another, we accelerate our careers and meeting our goals, and achieve a return in the form of a better quality of life. This is wise investing.
But what about the external people? Can we achieve our goals, have a career and truly improve our quality of life without the external people? NO! We must also invest in our external people (our market, our networking partners) to create a collaborative relationship that will produce the results (returns) leading to achievement of our goals by FIRST helping them achieve their goals. To focus one element of the point, in order to achieve a higher quality of life for ourselves, we must GIVE , or PROVIDE THE OPPORTUNITY for a higher quality of life to our clients, to those we serve. This is also wise investing.
How do we create these collaborative relationships? It is very simple. We give one another, and our clients and others, what they desire and need. We HELP them to achieve their goals. If the external people (clients, network partners, government agents) experience respect, and high level of service from us & our team (and hopefully we exceed expectations) then they will have a greater return on their investment of time and money spent with us. By assuring they receive a return on their investment, we will also receive the maximum return on our investment of our time, and our human capital.
Our goals of a higher quality of life, will be assured if we also assure they too will realize a higher quality of life.
Ultimately, what we must do, in the most simple form, is SERVICE to others. Serving (investing) in each other who are team members, in the external people (clients, network partners, family, the community), which grows our human capital across all areas of our life.
From my personal experience, this is greatest form of investment we can ever make. But the coolest part of it is….the return is not only today, tomorrow, and for our lifetime as we experience a “higher” quality of life…the return is eternal as you have effected lives, souls, and passed on the divine property known as GRACE. That my dear friends, takes the concept of “higher returns” to a whole different level.
Jeff Lawhorn, CPA
marketing@lawhorncpa.com
