Blog by Sharman Dow
The best investment you have in life is YOU! You are a treasure of great value who needs to understand the investment you place in yourself will reap great rewards and call success into your life.
Investing with a conscience is to make the best use of your time, finances and your career. It is being intentional in your conduct to make better use of those things that will cause you to prosper. It is having the scruples to dictate your life in a way that has meaning and will inhibit action that causes you to be wasteful.
In other words, in terms of your career, make decisions that command success so you achieve the fullness of your desires and goals without compromising your character. Invest in your life with a calculated conscience by making right decisions, not wasting your time and seeking guidance from those who have gone before you. It also means to use your mistakes and misfortunes as opportunities to learn from and move forward with a more determined attitude to achieve success. It means seeking God for direction.
Last week on Facebook Live I interviewed Gloria Nelund, one of the speakers at our next Empower Women’s Conference. Gloria, a remarkable woman, is founder and CEO of TriLinc Global, Inc., a private impact-investment firm that has invested more than $300 million in assets.
What exactly is an impact investment? During the interview Gloria explained, “an impact investment is an investment made into a company or organization that generates measurable benefits to society and/or the environment, along with creating a market-rate financial return for the investors.” She went on to say, “It’s using capitalism to benefit society and stop poverty.”
Gloria Nelund
WOW! Did you just read that: capitalism can be used for the betterment of society, and Gloria is proving it!
As we spoke, the term “invest with conscience” came up in our conversation, and it made me realize how important this is for your business career. For Gloria, starting an impact fund was a calling of God upon her life, as she has always loved business and investments. But it came from a two-year period of time in her life where she diligently sought God to find her purpose and passion; she had a crisis of faith in her career where she started to invest in her life with a conscience to make the right decision for her future.
To give you a little history on Gloria, her career started in banking, and she quickly moved up in the ranks of the industry. I’ve always known Gloria to be successful, and when she became CEO of Deutsche Bank North America Private Wealth Management managing more than $50 billion in assets, I thought, “what an incredible accomplishment for anyone, but especially for a woman to achieve in the man’s world of banking!” Naturally, it came as a surprise when I heard she had quit and walked away, deciding to take an early retirement.
What happened to Gloria that made her walk away from an extremely financially lucrative and successful career?
In her own words, she and her team had just completed one of the greatest turnarounds of a division at Deutsche Bank. At that point, it was the pinnacle of her career. They celebrated that night at dinner, and walking back to her apartment she questioned the validity of her success: “Is this what it’s all about?” She wanted more meaning in her life and decided to resign from Deutsche Bank and seek God to find the purpose for her life.
In those two years of retirement she realized business was her mission field, and the calling of God was to stay in the investment world – not walk away from it. She invested in herself with a conscience and found her purpose and meaning from God’s perspective. She founded the impact-investment firm TriLinc Global, Inc., and today she will tell you it truly is a God-ordained calling upon her life.
Come meet Gloria and four other amazing speakers at the next Empower Women’s Conference on October 22nd in Irvine, California, and learn how God moved in their business careers to give them purpose and meaning and invest in their lives with a conscience.
Sharman Dow is the founder of the Empower Women’s Conference, coming October 22nd to Orange County. Register today!
