Over my career, I’ve often described myself as a displaced academic. My skill set includes research, writing and teaching. For much of the last 25 years, this is what I did, producing a very nice living and then some.
My research involved understanding the mind-sets, behaviors and wealth-creating activities of the affluent, especially the super-rich. Understanding the business models, thinking and marketing strategies of successful professionals complemented this research. The focus of my business for many years was to convert this morass of information into actionable, profit-producing insights and methodologies that professionals could employ to build significant practices with high-net-worth clients. These are examples of some of my successful ventures:
• Helping a life insurance producer earn $2 million to $3 million a year. Before I was engaged, a “great year” for him was $300,000.
• Helping an accountant build a family office practice and increase annual revenues from $600,000 to more than $8 million.
• Working with an investment advisor who had less than $100 million under management to build a multifamily office that now manages more than $2 billion.
• Helping a 28-year-old raise half a billion dollars for a new hedge fund.
I then reached a point, however, where teaching as a business model collapsed, as more coaches, consultants and soothsayers entered the business and technology commoditized education.
Yet despite the significant impact these changes had on my career, the biggest reason for my consulting business going off the cliff was me.
Hand-holding is not one of my strong points, which is off-putting for some professionals. Another complication is that the systems and approaches I developed required hard work and a lot of time to implement.
With the need to still make money, I decided, by default, to stop educating professionals on how to succeed and instead applied the methodologies and processes directly. At the same time, because of my other business line—business coaching with the super-rich and family offices—being paid on production is not a possibility.
Today, while I continue to direct conferences, workshops and webinars, continue to write profusely and now and again take on short-term business coaching and consulting engagements, aside from working with the exceptionally wealthy, I configure and oversee business development initiatives for carefully selected sponsoring professionals and firms. I develop operational structures that source high-caliber prospects for them. Even though I’m not being paid on production, this is proving to be much more lucrative than teaching.
In conclusion, when teaching is no longer an option, all that remains is to do.
