By Joslyn G Ewart, CFP®, founding principal of Entrust Financial, LLC and member of NAWBO Philadelphia
Step One: Wealthy
Begging Ben Franklin’s forgiveness, we begin the year with a focus on wealthy as step one, saving healthy for step two in this article. As a business owner and fellow NAWBO member, I feel certain that you are focused on building and promoting your business—starting with day one of the new year, pandemic notwithstanding. You understand intimately that the more productive your business, the better your profits.
One vital component of business productivity is your employees. Cultivating the right employees and rewarding them to maintain and develop loyalty is a lynchpin of your ever-increasing success. Now is the perfect time to evaluate whether the retirement plan you established for yourself and your employees is structured to serve you and your firm as well as it might. For instance, does your plan:
- Serve as a recruiting magnet?
- Save on employee turnover?
- Reduce your small business taxes?
- Permit you to align your business values with your investment choices?
- Support your own personal retirement planning?
Implementing the right 401(k) plan, for example, can result in a return on investment (ROI) from day one, but like all good investments, it may also produce an ever-increasing ROI year after year. The right business retirement plan can enhance your overall productivity and profitability—a wealth-building first step to focus on in 2021.
Step Two: Healthy
You will be thrilled to learn, as I segue from financial wealth to health, that Step Two: Healthy, is free and you can do it at home. What do you need to do to improve and preserve the best health possible this year? You need to sleep well and enough—every night, as Matthew Walker eloquently and scientifically informs us in Why We Sleep. Your mother was right and now science has proven that if you have a desire to enhance your immune system, be more creative and live longer, the perfect sleep is the answer.
There is nothing like a pandemic to remind us that step two truly matters. I, along with my fellow NAWBO members and owners of Entrust, Mckenzie Frankel and Jennifer Bravo, are passionately in favor of recognizing the power of sleep. In fact, we invite you to join our upcoming virtual event: The Wealth of Sleep, planned to help all participants jumpstart the year in the most superlative way possible!
Step Three: Wise
Finally, I would like to share wisdom that keeps me going as a business owner, despite unpredictable day-to-day travails. Step Three: Wise is “Slow and steady wins the race, ” the moral from Aesop’s famous fable, The Tortoise and the Hare. I encourage you to keep this moral in mind, both personally and professionally, as you continue on your journey in 2021. Its truth can offer boundless perspective and inspiration.
Feel free to share these Wealthy, Healthy and Wise steps with your network, to inspire them as 2021 begins!
To learn more about Joslyn and the Entrust Financial team, please visit www.entrustfinancial.com.