Intentionally Personalizing Your Portfolio | AWM Insights #182
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Episode Summary
Investing should be centered around you and the plan should evolve as your life develops and changes. This general concept may sound straightforward and logical, but the ideology of setting an intention for the funds in your portfolio and constantly reevaluating and adjusting them is not a common one.
The simple reason for the lack of adoption is that this process is highly sophisticated. Foundations and Endowments manage their funds in this way. They have large teams dedicated to constantly finding purpose and making the updates necessary to stay on track.
Our Family Offices’ human-centered approach enables families to implement the same sophisticated process as billion-dollar entities and accomplish the goals most important to them. Meaning matters, and honing in on that meaning through intentionality is the first step to properly managing multigenerational wealth.
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Episode Highlights:
0:00 Intro
0:15 Starting with Intentionality
1:10 How we use your vision and intentionality to build a portfolio
2:35 Your portfolios are ever evolving
4:50 Start big when building out your vision
6:50 Text us!
+ Read the Transcript
Justin Dyer (00:02): All right, we're back. We got Mr. Mena Hanna joining us once again. Brandon is on the road over at the winter meetings, so thanks for sitting in here Mena. We're continuing our little miniseries here on the four-step goal formula from our good friend Brian Kane. Many of you all listening, know him quite well and taking this four step goal formula and applying it to really what we do. I think we talked about this a little bit last week. It's incredibly applicable. It lines up super, super well with how we think about the world, how we think about planning and investing one's assets to accomplish those plans, those goals.
(00:46): So we're going to continue here. We're going to keep the next few episodes a little bit short here to wind up the year and to touch on these four steps each individually in a little bit more detail. But step number one, as most of you either are familiar with or heard last week, it's setting an intention. Really to us that is setting goals or setting priorities in our vernacular. And Mena, take it away, you're on the investment side. Why is that really, really important to us in how we tackle working with clients?
Mena Hanna (01:19): Yeah, so really finding meaning, finding purpose, finding intention is the starting spot. We use a customized priority driven approach to build out your models, to build out your portfolios, and ultimately it starts with you, with the client. So your priorities, your goals, what you want to accomplish end up being the foundation of the process that we establish and we go from there. So in a sense, the client and their goals dictate the management of the portfolio. It's not just me or you deciding what's hot, what we think is going to perform well. It ultimately comes down to what the client needs to accomplish and how we can actually get them there.
Justin Dyer (02:04): Yeah, that's right. And you say kind of tongue in cheek are for fun, but there's some truth to it is that a client or their priorities or goals rather are really the portfolio manager because we don't put a big overlay of predicting markets or the future from a portfolio construction standpoint to influence where you might hold stocks versus bonds. We really let those priorities drive those allocations. I'm going to dig a little bit more or flip it more to the qualitative side. So let's talk about setting an intention, right? It's obviously really, really critical from a technical standpoint for us, it's how we build portfolios. As you highlighted, it influences our asset allocations because we want those asset allocations to truly support what is important to you. We say money is a tool to accomplish what's important to you. This is exactly what we mean by this.
(03:03): This is where that statement actually meets a practical implementation or practical process within our firm. Now you could say to an extent it's garbage in, garbage out. So that intention, those priorities, the terms we use, the goals really, really matter. Now, I think sometimes we can get caught up in the importance of those or the difficulty in thinking about the future. Brian Cain has a great quote. It's the start that stops most people. So it's human nature to an extent to get caught up, "Oh man, I got to think about five years down the road, 10 years, 30, 40 years down the road," for some folks, and it's hard, but you need to start somewhere. It's easier to think about goals for the next 12 months, maybe 24 months. When you start to get beyond that, it becomes a little bit more cloudy. But directionally, if we can get moving in the right way, then that's fine.
(04:06): That's what we're looking for. None of this, none of what we do is set in stone. Hopefully clients are comfortable with that aspect and familiar just talking with their advisors, but the intentionality, the getting going, taking that first step so we have something to work with when it comes to investing your assets so it is taken into account that intentionality. That's really what is most important to us. And then, hey, let's review this each and every year. That is part of this formula as well and we'll talk a little bit more about that, but it's better to get going somewhere and frame assets with an intention or within your priorities than getting too caught up in it. So hopefully this is really, really helpful. I think the last thing I'll say too, around intentions and priorities, it's better to go big than start small as well.
(05:04): Throw some wild things on there. We can incorporate that with your advisor to say, "Hey, this is more of a vision board type aspect, future envisioning what your life wants to be like." And then as reality comes, maybe a goal falls off the list or maybe it actually is strengthened and bolstered and we say, "Hey, this is actually something that we really want to come make happen in reality." So it's a really fun process, at least I think it's a super fun process. Hopefully clients also enjoy it, working with their team, talking through it and kind of thinking big picture, but it's also critical.
(05:43): So I think that's one thing to leave with folks listening today, is setting that intentionality. It is step number one in this four step goal process for a reason. So setting those priorities, it's the foundation really of what we do here and how we build portfolios and really, really not something to take lightly and don't get caught up with it, take that first step. And then we can always rinse and repeat down the road, which we'll talk through in the coming days or coming episodes with this four step goal formula. So a little bit of a monologue there for me I realized, but hopefully it was helpful for everyone. With that, we'll wrap for the week today. Thanks for joining us, Mena, and I'll wrap with own your wealth, make an impact, and always be a pro.