Aardsma - Investing with purpose: capitalize on the time and money you have to create the tomorrow you desire

This book has great value for all earlier stage entrepreneurs, and Mark shares his personal growth skills for everyones benefit.

Lee Oneill,
Executive Director of Urbana-Champaign
Angel Network, former President and
CEO of Busey Bank

Investing With Purpose is an exceptional book! In a highly engaging manner, Mark Aardsma provides practical and proven approaches to investing in the creation of a fulfilling life. This is a book that every entrepreneur should read.

Edgar Papke,
Leadership Coach and author,
The Elephant in the Boardroom

I found myself desperately wishing I had read this book when I was 28. And yet now at the age of 58, being challenged that it is not too late to make some significant life changes regarding the resources in my life. Mark has done a masterful job of intertwining life experience and illustrations with principles demonstrating how to identify and make decisions regarding your resources, enabling you to live life to the maximum and positively impact your world.

Dave Clark,
Christian Community Development Association,
Operations and Program Director

CAPITALIZE ON THE TIME AND MONEY YOU HAVE TO CREATE THE TOMORROW YOU DESIRE

INVESTING
With
PURPOSE

><

By

Mark Aardsma

Copyright 2016 by Mark Aardsma

All rights reserved under the Pan-American and International Copyright Conventions. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or hereafter invented, without written permission from the publisher, The Career Press.

INVESTING WITH PURPOSE

EDITED BY JODI BRANDON

TYPESET BY EILEEN MUNSON

Cover design by Rob Johnson/Toprotype

Cover Image by Bruce Rolff/shutterstock

Interior illustrations by Ian Riley

Printed in the U.S.A.

To order this title, please call toll-free 1-800-CAREER-1 (NJ and Canada: 201-848-0310) to order using VISA or MasterCard, or for further information on books from Career Press.

The Career Press, Inc.

12 Parish Drive

Wayne, NJ 07470

www.careerpress.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

CIP Data Available Upon Request.

To you: Thank you for aspiring with me to invest well for the greater good.

To my wife, Jenn: Thank you for supporting the creation of this book with your quiet and active love.

To my friends Adam, Tim, and Tony: Thank you for batting around ideas and encouraging me in this project.

To my cousin Feather: Thank you for company and support in the writing sessions.

To fellow entrepreneur Cameron: Thank you for the music that became the soundtrack to my writing.

To my mentor Greg: Thank you for your steady belief in my greater potential.

To my mentor John: Thank you for working really hard on me with me. To my mentor Edgar: Thank you for generously sharing your window on people and business with me.

To my former employee Phil: Thank you for inspiring the two best business ideas Ive had so far, and for your companionship at the beginning of it all.

To my business managers Collin, Joey, Kim, Lynn, Mario, and Adrienne: Thank you for leading my companies to continued success.

To my assistant, Venus: Thank you for believing in this work and supporting me in the details.

To fellow entrepreneur Katie: Thank you for being among the first to show me the broad usefulness of my personal investing notes.

To entrepreneur and illustrator Ian: Thank you for seeing the value of this project, and for contributing your unique ability to communicate visually.

To my local editor, Susanna: Thank you for making my writing better, and for lending your personal presence to the process.

To my literary agent, Maryann: Thank you for your sharp insight, humble confidence, and strong advocacy.

To the print and audio publishing teams: Thank you for believing in this work and for investing your resources to produce it.

To my parents: Thank you for investing in me, and for teaching me initiative, resourcefulness, and grit. They have served me well.

This book contains my best attempt to distill what worked and why from my experiences as an entrepreneur and an investor. Your results may vary. The advice in this book is not a substitute for professional tax, legal, or accounting advice.

Throughout this book I address the reader directly, and for simplicity and clarity I give recommendations in the form of imperative sentences. These should not be interpreted as specific instructions for any individuals situation. Portions of this book likely do not apply to your specific circumstances. Please exercise judgment before making investment decisions.

What will you do with your potential? In this book, I want to invite you to clarify the future you aspire to, and equip you to make your aspirations reality by effectively investing the time and money you have.

You get to decide what you want. It might be to attain great wealth, to generously improve our world, or both. Maybe you want to build your organization into something much more than it is today. Perhaps lifelong learning and discovery are what you value most, or maybe its living out your faith. You might aspire to triumph over what scares you, or to forge the fulfilling relationships you long for.

No matter what you aspire to, how you use the time and money you have will determine whether you make that future reality, or whether it will exist only as an unfulfilled dream.

At age 24 I was laid off, with just a few thousand dollars in savings. Instead of looking for a new job, I sat down at a makeshift desk in my basement and began to invest my time and money differently. Over the next 10 years I multiplied that savings a thousand-fold into a multi-million-dollar portfolio of businesses and other investments. During that time I also invested in my personal growth, transforming from a timid technician to a confident and capable CEO.

Along the way I created and refined a document that became my personal guidebook of time-and-money investment principles. When I grasped a new insight, or made a big mistake, I updated that document. When I felt afraid or confused about an investment decision, I reviewed that document to clarify my course.

This book is that guidebook in expanded form, illustrated with stories from my learning experiences. The investment rules in this book arent about stock markets or financial wizardry. They are about how to use your resources effectively to get where you want to go. They work just as well today as they did thousands of years ago, before stock markets and even money were invented.

If you intentionally invest for a long time toward a deliberate future, youll probably have more resources and more influence than most of the people you walk this earth with. Invest well.

Mark Aardsma

Ten years before I wrote this, my employer lost the majority of its funding and I lost my job. I had a wife and two young children. We were partway through major renovations on the 104-year-old farmhouse we lived in, near a tiny town in rural Illinois. I didnt have a college degree, family with money, or an employment backup plan. We had recently spent most of our savings on materials for our home renovations. We had two or three thousand dollars to our name.