The financial industry has been good to Erin Botsford. What started in 1989 as high hopes for a secretarial job at AG Edwards turned into a lifelong advisory career that rewarded her drive, adaptability and smarts.

And now, five years after selling Dallas-based Botsford Financial Group, which had close to $1 billion in assets under management at the time of the sale, Botsford said her latest expression of those attributes is now rewarding her in a truly virtuous cycle.

“Lots of intersections happen in life,” she said. “One thing always prepares you for the next thing.”

That next thing for her, Botsford said, is using much of the revenue from her advisory training business in McKinney, Texas, to support an orphanage, school, farm and community in Africa, and other similar endeavors.

The primary focus of her charitable work is Ebenezer Foundation in Livingstone, Zambia, where the mission is to save, raise and educate impoverished and orphaned children through four structured initiatives that lift the entire community in different ways.

The Ebenezer Children’s Home, which is the only area home accepting newborns, cares for 48 orphaned children from infancy through high school. The home employs 13 local women who act as “mums,” plus another 30 local staff who run the facility.

Ebenezer School is 100% donor supported and always filled to capacity. It has 427 primary students and 48 middle school students who are taught and fed two meals each day. In addition, there are 38 high school students, and 11 university students receiving partial assistance. The school employs 21 teachers and staff.

Ebenezer Farm’s 40 acres represents food security for many people in Livingstone and is working toward being self-sustaining. Here 13 workers farm seven varieties of produce and tend to lemon and orange trees while hatching 1,200 chickens annually to be sold locally. And finally, Ebenezer Community Food Assistance provides emergency food assistance to the poorest local families and supports 16 families with monthly assistance for cornmeal, oil and sugar.

The cost of this support is what many would find shockingly low by American standards—$400,000 a year.

“My husband and I heard that, and we thought, ‘We could make a huge difference giving our money here,’” Botsford said. “So in 2009 we decided that would be our primary charity.”

Finding Meaning And Purpose
From title insurance agent to stockbroker to financial advisor with Barron’s Top 100 status to an advisor’s advisor, Botsford has had a knack for leveraging one opportunity into what seems like a half-dozen more. Within three months of landing her first securities job in 1989, she brought $25 million in assets to the firm through a local company’s retirement buyout of 900 employees, she said.

Most budding financial advisors would be very happy about that.

“I wasn’t. I later found out $792 million had been up for grabs, and I got only $25 million of it,” she said.

One of the perks of working at a large broker-dealer was the travel that top producers would be awarded as additional incentives. One year she went to France, another to Spain, she said. But it was an award trip in 1999 that ended up being one thing that prepared her for the next thing.

It was a luxurious trip and a really good time, she said, spent mostly in the teeming, elegant city of Capetown.

“We knew we were being sheltered from the crappy side of South African life,” Botsford said.

So later, when a travel agent friend set her up on a photographer’s safari in 2004, she and her husband were eager to experience Africa more as a reality and less as a resort.

Because the heat keeps preserve animals hiding in shade, typical safaris are run with an early morning game drive followed by breakfast, a day of free time, and then an evening game drive followed by dinner.

“During the day we were free for a cultural experience,” Botsford said. “One day we went to Livingstone, which is near Victoria Falls, and visited an orphanage and school.”

There the Botsfords found 40 babies in 20 cribs, and they were put to work cuddling and providing a parental touch to the infants. In the toddler home next door, they got down on the floor and spent the afternoon crawling around with the kids, she said.

“There was the baby home, a toddler home, a boys home and a girls home. The children went to school, and they went to chapel,” she said, drawing a connection between what she witnessed in Livingstone and her own life. “My dad died when I was 11, leaving my mom penniless with six kids. We were destitute. And then I lost my mom, too, because she had to go to work. I think that’s why I’m drawn to these orphans. I’d come home to a home alone.”

And when she heard that $400,000 a year made such a difference for so many, she was all in.

“I was making a lot of money in my business, so it was easy to fund,” she said. “But once I sold the company, I had to figure out something else. I have to have meaning and purpose in my life. So now I help advisors and feed kids.”

A Mindset Of Abundance
The way Botsford helps advisors is through The Elite Advisor Success System, her latest venture in the financial services arena. She charges $5,000 for a six-month virtual program that covers mindset, prospecting and marketing, team member training, recruitment and the “secret sauce” to closing a prospect in the first meeting, among other topics.

And the way she feeds kids is by donating 50% of profits to Ebenezer Foundation and other African orphanages.

“I really wanted to give back to the industry that made me successful,” she said. “My idea was to do it once, sell it a million times and give half the money to Ebenezer.”

To date, more than 850 advisors have joined the course, she said.

“We’re making enough money that we’re able to donate to other African organizations, not just Ebenezer,” she said. “I could have kept my company, but how much is enough? Now, because I can help these kids, it feeds my soul. I’m so committed to this lifestyle I have a $5 million life insurance policy, and my son knows it’s to continue with Ebenezer should something happen to me.”

In an industry when so many people—advisors and clients alike—are always looking for more, Botsford said she believes when an advisor has done well and then wants to do good, the right opportunity will arise.

“I live in a mindset of abundance,” she said. “To me, the more I give away, the more I make. I can’t explain it, there’s no logic to it. I think it’s just a universal principle.”