Navigating Abundance Foundations: Plugging Into Navigating Abundance

Welcome back to Navigating Abundance. I’m Chris Tanke.

Well, you’ve made it through the first two podcasts in our foundation series and now you’re ready to dive into the third. I’m so glad you’re still with me. I’d like to think that something I’ve said previously on our podcast or maybe something that you read on our website has been of value to you already. At least that’s my hope. So perhaps the total family wealth concept is somewhat new to you.

I can imagine you could be facing a sudden wealth event where you’re going to sell a business that’s been family held for many years and all of a sudden you’re going to be in a different position with different opportunities and different responsibilities. Or perhaps you’re a first generation wealth creator. You’re very, very good in your creation of financial capital, but your family capital could probably use a little work and you recognize that.

Or perhaps you’re Gen 2 in a family enterprise and you realize in the next several years, well, you’ve got a lot on your plate and you’re feeling a little overwhelmed, a little unprepared. Or maybe it’s not so much what I said, but the way in which I said it. Have you ever heard the adage, small hinges swing large doors? Sometimes the right word said at the right time, said in the right way can make all the difference in somebody’s life. And that really is the serendipitous nature of podcasting. You throw ideas out there across the cyber universe, and you really don’t know who’s listening. And you don’t know who you’re impacting. I find that rather exciting. So somebody in New Zealand could be listening to this, and have already picked up a few things that they kind of knew already.

But the way in which I said it just impacted their lives. they’re going to start making some changes, start making some steps toward growth and improvement in their total family wealth responsibilities. Fantastic. So wherever you are in that journey, wherever we are in our connectivity with you, we just want you to know we’re very honored to be communicating with you. So where do we go from here? What’s the next step? Well, I’ve jotted down a few ideas for you here to kind of prod your thinking in that.

First of all, wherever you get your podcast from, subscribe or follow Navigating Abundance. Our intent is to be quite prolific with our production of podcasts, our producing of podcasts. And really, we want to be varied in the way that we’re doing this. So so far, you’ve been riveted by handsome guy giving you monologues. I just want you to know that that’s not going to be even 20 % of what we’re doing.

We were going to be bringing on practitioners and experts in their fields to cover different topics of interest and of import to you that you can either take their advice or not. But we want to give that kind of information to you. But the other thing that I’m thinking about is what kind of podcasts can we deliver that are inspirational? And this is kind of a risk, but I think it would be fantastic to have families that are on the navigating abundance journey [and] kind of share their story with you. You could then say, wow, if that’s working for them, maybe I should start thinking about doing that. Because essentially, human beings are all the same. We’re kind of all in this together. I think that’d be really, really neat to see. Might be a little more difficult to pull off because of privacy issues or whatever. But boy, I think we’re going to pursue it and see what we can do there. So yeah, that would be then a combination of practitioners are giving us the information and then we’re getting a lot of inspiration from people that are actually living it, the family members. I think that could be really, really neat. Second, you might want to check out our resource page. Again, those are vetted resources for you. They’re there because we think they’re really good. In particular, let me encourage you to do something kind of different.

And you don’t have to do this, but wow, you know, if you look at one of those books and say, well, I’d like to get that, I just encourage you to order it on Amazon or something and get the hard copy in your hands. I know you can kindle it. I know it’s more convenient, but maybe this could be like just a little diversion on how you normally would read a book. Get it in your hands, pour yourself a cup of coffee, get out your highlighter, dog ear pages, underline, highlight, get involved with it. And I think that different sensory perception of handling that information, just might do a little something for you. I’m a book guy, so I’m kind of bent that way. But I’d encourage you to consider actually getting the book and grabbing a cup of coffee. And then third, watch for practical resources, tools, educational events that we’re going to develop as we make navigating abundance more and more and more available to you.

The concept of navigating abundance began in 2022. That’s when it was hatched, but it wasn’t launched until the spring of 2025. So we’ve been thinking about this for a while, but I would say officially we’re on stage one of the navigating abundance movement. And we’re building this out as we go along. Essentially, we’re creating something, at least from our perspective, from scratch.

We’re very proud to say that we don’t know what we don’t know. I hope we never lose that philosophy. But at this point in navigating abundance, what that means for us is that we have an exciting adventure ahead of us. We’re to be meeting some really cool people. We’re going to be solving some really cool problems. We’re going to be communicating some awesome concepts.

And five years from now, when we look back at Navigating Abundance, I’m confident we’re going to say, wow, we never saw that coming. We never knew it would take that direction. So we’re, on faith, launching out this Navigating Abundance community, this Navigating Abundance concept, realizing that, you know, maybe eyes have not seen and ears have not heard what’s prepared for us.

So I would say we’re not exactly sure what steps we’re taking, but let me give you three that we’ve been mulling around and I would say are pretty serious about. First, we want you to know that we want to create some tools and deliverables for you. So maybe there’ll be assessments that you can take on your own, or maybe it’ll be the top five things to remember when you’re selling a business or something like that so that it’s not just audibly through and visually through podcasts, but we’re giving you some white paper reading material. And hopefully things that could be pretty robust, like for instance, I know that there’s a group that if you’ve given $50,000, they’ll take you through an assessment of where your family is and a lot of these total family wealth concepts. I’m not saying that’s not worth it. I think it’s very worth it if it allows you to move in a couple different areas that you’re not moving in. But if you don’t want to take that step, maybe we could create something that at least is sort of like an assessment light that you could utilize on your home just by downloading it off the website. It’s that kind of stuff that we’re thinking about doing. We said that navigating abundance is a team sport in our prolegomena section.

That means that you need a group of people. You can’t do it on your own. And that also is true of us. So we’re thinking about how do we build out a collaborative group of practitioners? How do we do that exactly? And more specifically, I would say, is there a way to function as a connector if you were to call in or email in and say, hey, wow, I’m looking for this? Do you know somebody that does this?

I was joking with the staff today. Maybe it’s like the Angie’s list of total family wealth practitioners. How do we become effectual at connecting people? Don’t know the answer to that yet, but we’re going to get our version of it. I promise you of that. And finally, we also talked about the concept that information plus inspiration equals transformation. All right, so information alone is probably not going to get you where you need to go.

Inspiration alone, it’s just going to excite you but not really give you any foundation for change. But if you put the two together, transformation happens. So why not a navigating abundance retreat? Symposium. Conference. Now, we’re not ready to do this in six months, but we should start thinking about that. Here in Michigan, in Traverse City area, there is a large horse show throughout the summer, but especially in the fall. And people fly in from all over the world to show horses, to watch horses dance around or whatever they do. Forgive me if you’re equestrian. But they spend a lot of money and a lot of time to get there to be in that community. Why? Because they’re getting information and they’re getting inspiration. It’s worth it.

Or maybe you’ve flown out to Barrett Jackson a couple times to check over a car to buy or whatever. You can do it online, but why would you get in an airplane and fly all the way over, right? Well, basically it’s that community that inspires you to change. Or if you were on a marriage retreat at a church or something like that, right? You could read the book, but there’s just something about going with your bride to that retreat with other couples that are hearing concepts and and then you’re in that community of people that want to basically all improve their relationships. It motivates you to do it. I see in the total family wealth community, and again, I’m going to make somebody mad, but I see in the total family wealth community that there are symposiums, there are retreats, there are conferences, but they’re primarily geared toward practitioners. And I’ve been to some of them, and they’re very good, and they’re wonderful in their place. As practitioners get together and they share ideas and they learn new concepts, and they exchange business cards, and they start collaborating, and it’s just inspirational. It’s really great. But the end user, the customer, is the practitioner.

Where is navigating abundance, where is total family wealth concepts for the family, for individuals that are living it, not their practitioners, but for them? Wouldn’t it be really neat to build that out? Now, I’m sure somebody has, I’ve just not tripped across it yet. I’ve seen it for smaller groups of ultra-ultra-high net worth people. They would get together with two or three families and have a retreat.

But I’m not seeing it where there’s 300 or 400 people, families, that are getting together to learn through symposiums and breakout sessions and inspirational speaking and whatnot. There’s no retreat for them that I can see. Wouldn’t it be really neat to put that together? Wouldn’t that be a lot of work to put that together? You better would. But I think it would be dynamic.

So these are some of the things we’re thinking about here at Navigating Abundance. Again, we are basically, I would say, on stage one of the movement. But hang with us. Stay tuned. I think that you’re going to be really encouraged by some of the things that we’re trying to create for you. And hopefully that you’ll find that helpful. Speaking of which, please check out our website at navigatingabundance.com.

If you’d like to make any comments about what you heard today, of course, there’s opportunity to do that in the comment section of our podcast. And of course, if you feel that you’ve got some value out of this, please feel free to share with other people that also might have the same experience. So again, this is Chris Tanke from Navigating Abundance thanking you for listening and reminding you once again, your family is worth it.