Our proprietary approach will evaluate your personal balance sheet in its entirety, including every single asset and liability you currently have.  

We’ll ask you questions about each significant asset to make sure it’s still fulfilling its original purpose and making a tangible contribution to your wealth and happiness. 

Then, we put those assets together and evaluate them as a whole. Here are a few examples of common assets: 

• Closely-held businesses 
• Residence and other real estate owned for personal use (i.e., second homes and/or vacation properties). 
• Residential and commercial rental properties 
• Publicly-traded financial investments
• Non-traded, private equity and debt investments 
• Annuities and life insurance 
• Oil & gas limited partnerships 
• Land 
• Fine art and other collectibles 
• Cryptocurrencies 

On the other side of the ledger, we’ll evaluate your liabilities to determine if you’re efficiently and effectively using debt financing instruments by asking a few questions: 

• Does each debt instrument serve a useful, specific purpose? 
• Are you utilizing too much or too little debt? 
• Can the terms of your debt instruments be improved? 
• Is there an opportunity to restructure your existing debt to improve cash flow? 

After our analysis, we’ll incorporate all your assets and liabilities into Your 360º Future™ Blueprint.

Before you have an estate planning attorney create legal documents, you’ll want to map out the legacy you want to leave behind first. 

Then, we pair that with your personal goals for your future, your new beginning, so that we can clearly see how your vision for your legacy will impact the financial aspects of Your 360º Future™ Blueprint, both during your lifetime and after you pass away.  

The complexity of this component can vary widely based on the assets you hold and the size of your estate. Here are a few potential legacies that our clients commonly consider:

• Asset distribution among heirs 
• Beneficiary designations for life insurance policies and qualified retirement accounts
• Appropriateness of a revocable living trust 
• Family gifting plans
• Charitable giving strategies
• Life insurance strategies 
• Irrevocable trust strategies  
• Business succession planning

The United States tax code changes frequently. Therefore, we work with Certified Public Accountants who stay on top of these changes and constantly evaluate how they impact high-achieving individuals. 

We’ll integrate these tax strategies into your financial plan to reflect the short-term and long-term trade-offs that have been evaluated. 

We keep an open mind with respect to taxes because the best long-term strategy may not be to lower taxes today—it might be to pay additional taxes today in exchange for lower (or no) taxes in the future.

Here are a few strategies we’ll walk through with you:

• Income deferral & shifting 
• Deductions and above-the-line strategies 
• Investment tax strategies 
• Business owner-specific tactics 
• Advanced tax planning techniques 

Personal risk management is the process of identifying, evaluating, and mitigating potential risks that could negatively impact your financial security and overall well-being. 

We’ll work with insurance professionals to develop strategies to mitigate or manage the impact of unforeseen events. These strategies are designed to proactively protect your family and your assets from potential financial and personal hardships caused by: 

• Illness, injury or disability 
• Unemployment or loss of income 
• Property damage 
• Adverse legal liability 
• Premature death

We get entrepreneurs! As entrepreneurs ourselves, we understand what your life is like and how your business fits into your financial life.

If you own a closely-held business, it’s likely your largest asset. Usually, the business is illiquid (not easily turned into cash), and the value is difficult to determine. 

Ensure Your Business Is Evaluated Accurately

We believe your business is a major asset that deserves to be properly reflected in the planning process. 

To accomplish this, we refer you to outside advisors who can assess and value your business, identifying any weaknesses that could be improved to increase your business’s value. 

These expert professionals will help facilitate the recommended improvements and propose a timeline for finishing those improvements, which will also influence the timeline for your new beginning. 

For example, you may be able to sell right now and get some money, but you might be able to get a much larger number if you spend a few years investing in your business. 

Which number you need depends on the Relevant Living™ piece of your strategy, your vision for your legacy and more.

No matter what number you need, we’ll work with you to develop a realistic strategy based on real valuation data that you get from those outside advisors.

This creates a financial planning challenge: How do we account for your business in Your 360º Future™ Blueprint if we don’t know how much it’s worth?

The default answer for many financial advisors is this: “Let’s plug your ‘best guess’ for your business’s value, but let’s not count on it for your planning purposes.” 

In reality, most business owners are completely dependent on the monetization of their illiquid business to fund their future. The default answer just doesn’t make sense.