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judy smith Jun 2015
For financial advisors wanting to increase the assets they manage, a number of situations provide tremendous opportunities. These are situations where there is “money in motion,” investable assets now available to be managed.

These opportunities are all put in motion by a “trigger event.” One example is inheriting significant sums from an affluent parent. Another example is the monies provided to an ex-spouse as part of a divorce settlement.

For most financial advisors, the greatest opportunity to capture money in motion is when a successful business owner sells his or her company. Worldwide, the most significant creator of personal wealth is entrepreneurism. Moreover, most successful entrepreneurs are only rich on paper until they sell a portion or all of their companies.

When they monetize the value of their firms, they have investable assets that they often turn over to investment professionals to manage. This scenario is unquestionably one of the very best ways for financial advisors to bring in more assets to manage.

Most Entrepreneurs Want To Be Wealthier

In order to win the investment business of these entrepreneurs, it is useful for you to understand that becoming wealthy was (and is) a core motivation of their business building efforts. In a survey of 513 business owners, a little more than nine out of 10 of them want to become significantly wealthier than they are today (Exhibit 1). Moreover, all of them strongly recognize that their ability to become wealthier is a function of the success of their business.

There are often many reasons business owners want to be wealthier. Taking care of loved ones regularly tops the list (Exhibit 2). The success of the business and their ability to maximize personal wealth is usually instrumental in this regard.

At the same time, about seven out of 10 entrepreneurs said they are interested in doing more to support worthy charitable causes (Exhibit 3). Again, the success of their business and their ability to translate that success into personal wealth can be significant in enabling these business owners to be more philanthropic.

A core motivation for most entrepreneurs is personal wealth creation. This often carries over into how they want their monies invested once they sell all or part of their businesses. It is useful to note that the majority of business owners who monetize their companies are not walking away with hundreds of millions of dollars. Most businesses are small or midsize businesses, and there are often equity partners and possibly investors. This frequently means that the entrepreneurs are looking to have the monies that they entrust to investment professionals grow (Exhibit 4).

Skipping The ‘Fashion Show’

When entrepreneurs have considerable liquid assets after selling their companies, they regularly turn to financial advisors to manage all or a portion of these monies. This often results in a fashion show where a stream of investment professionals vies for the attention (and funds) of the former business owner.

About one in 10 considered a single investment professional. About three out of 10 deliberated between two financial advisors. More telling, about 60% looked at three or more investment professionals.

There are regularly a plethora of factors that go into winning a fashion show. Some of them are money-management-related, such as performance track record and investment philosophy. Sometimes, the deciding factor is chemistry or lack thereof between the financial advisors and the former entrepreneur. It is always preferable to be the singular financial advisor being considered to manage the money.

When only one financial advisor was considered, in every case there was a pre-existing relationship. This is the key to skipping having to compete once the entrepreneur has significant liquid assets to invest.

For financial advisors, the ability to avoid the fashion show as well as dramatically increase the probability of winning most, if not all, of the business owner’s asset management business is to be involved before the sale and endorsed by trusted professionals the entrepreneur is already working with.

It is important to recognize that nearly nine out of 10 successful business owners would like to, at some point in time, sell their companies (Exhibit 6). This provides professionals with meaningful opportunities to help them maximize their personal wealth from the sale. However, only about 15% of entrepreneurs are taking such action (Exhibit 7). This opens the door for many financial advisors to be involved with these successful business owners before the sale.

Getting directly involved can prove exceedingly beneficial for business owners. The most efficacious way to do this is by being recommended by their accountants. While successful business owners will usually rely on a variety of professionals, it is apparent that their accountants are regularly their primary “go to” resource. As so many critical business decisions are entwined with the financials of the company, these entrepreneurs depend on their accountants to help them navigate the possibilities and make wise choices.

Even where financial advisors are not involved before the sale, for most entrepreneurs the advice of the accountants proves to be a key determinant to whom to entrust new liquid assets. Still, the preferred approach is to—often through the entrepreneur’s accountant—have some effective interactions before the sale of the company.

Conclusions

Entrepreneurism is the greatest creator of private wealth. It also produces some of the most significant pools of investable assets. The ability to win investment management mandates from successful business owners who have sold all or part of their companies can dramatically increase a financial advisor’s practice.

Many times, there is a fashion show where investment professionals compete for the newly liquid assets of ex-entrepreneurs. A more effective approach is to build a relationship before the sale. What is often required is for the successful business owner’s accountant to be an advocate for the financial advisor.?Read more at:www.marieaustralia.com/long-formal-dresses | www.marieaustralia.com/formal-dresses
Rewind this memoir back to my first foster home.   I’m reclining on the couch in the living room watching Superman, a whatever's-on-tv-saturday-afternoon-movie.   "Give A Little Bit" played from the soundtrack.  The Supertramp song reached out from the screen and into my own complicated teen-aged life.  Oh the words of that song blindsided me, hit me hard in the chest with a sad yearning, an emotion I had ignored forever like that elephant in the room too big to push out the door.  Because life was so hard, too hard, and lonely on and on, and the world gives only just enough that you keep breathing, but you wonder why.  Yes, please  someone  give just a little....
But at the time I hadn't known anything else and I just stuffed that overwhelming sad lonely feeling.  Too much need wears out a welcome in someone else's home.  It seemed most everyone else had family, security, some money for perhaps things like a pair of cleats to run in school track if you have the desire. Its called belonging or opportunity and I was acutely aware I wouldn't have it.

Fast forward 25 years; business for my glass art studio is rewarding.  I live in Cleveland, or what I called Purgatory.  I like the city though; I think the motto should be "Its Not That Bad."  A tough steel town, unpretentious to a fault, tenacious, it inspired the Clean Water Act because the river was so polluted it   caught   on   fire.  People who live there just don't quit, except that the biggest export is young people. The streets are eerily empty, the quiet steel mills are epic sculptures of rust.  But its not that bad.  Now they make a tasty beer called Burning River.  Sometimes they gamble on unconventional ideas because they've reached the end of status-quo.  One can even surf there, when the wind blows a Nor'easter in the fall, just before the lake freezes. The wave break is nicknamed "Sewer Pipe"; one can imagine why.

I biked with a club there; cycling part of my life-blood.  Life was pretty good, blessed with measures of contentment and happiness and family, even through so many challenges.  Except I'm stuck pedaling a trainer in the basement most of the long winter.  It was during an endless, gray February that I was inspired by an idea: a Velodrome.  Its one of those banked tracks people in America only see during the Olympics.  Cover it, and people could have a bicycle park all year-round with palm trees in the winter, in Cleveland.  Its a blast of a sport with serious American heritage.  A velodrome is a place where all a kid has to do is show up and with enough heart he or she can make it to the Olympics.  They wouldn't need money, just 100% heart.  It would be the kind of opportunity I didn't have when I was a kid.

So I decided to take on the responsibility to build one... not to be afraid of the price tag, or how to do it, or let a label like "disabled veteran with a head injury" daunt me.  I figured my role was to get the project started and motivate others to do other parts.  I decided not to discuss my shortcomings, introduce myself with that label, or use it as a disclaimer.   As many times as I wished I had a chalkboard sign around my neck saying, Please excuse the mess, I had to tell myself it was not an excuse.
There would need to be many others; but the fact that I knew only a dozen people on the planet didn't stop me either.  Two people inspired me.  Kyle MacDonald had a dream to barter a paper clip for something better, trading that for something else, anything else, until he had a house.  I thought I could start with an old laptop, a couple thousand dollars, and my idea. I'd work to leverage each bit of progress, not knowing what they were yet.  Thats how anything gets done, right?  Erik Weihenmayer is a blind alpine mountain climber, conquering even Everest.  He didn’t let anyone convince him what he couldn’t do, and didn’t let impairments keep him from his goal.  He didn't let blindness, the fact that he couldn't see the top as well as others, make the goal any less enjoyable for himself.  Also, there’s no way he could have done it without help.

There are no business plans for a Velodrome or someone else would have built more of them already.  I'm good at figuring things out, what with having to relearn things all the time.  I don't quit because that has never seemed to be an option.  Resourcefulness is my middle name, having to put my life back together every year or so.  Certainly the project was eccentric but as an artist I've never really cared about what others thought.  I certainly didn't have a reputation for sanity to maintain.  Professionally, I’ve had experience with so many factors of development: from paperwork at the back end as a Project Assistant, to designing it as a Mechanical Drafter, to constructing it as a Steel Detailer.  I understood this project.

Every time I discovered something needed to be done, I'd figure out how to do it.  I took an online tutorial and put together a website, attended communication seminars for better speaking skills, learned how to recruit a Board of Directors, took classes for fundraising, won a few grants, and started a non-profit.  I had to buy a couple of suits for meetings.  I kept hoping someone who knew what they were doing would take over, but that never seemed to materialize.  What I thought would be a few months turned into several hard years of work, learning new things on the fly like politics, business etiquette, computer programs, how to understand and write financials and business plans for stadiums.

It felt like cramming for finals, taking exams for classes I never attended.  I didn’t just burn my candle on both ends, I was torching it in the middle too.  Every challenge I had ever gone through seemed like it was a preparation for this one.  Many times I wondered if it was all for nothing; so many dead ends and frustrations and years where the project was barely on life-support.  Mistakes and wrong turns making people mad, losing faith in me.  Would it ever really happen?  I kept imagining what my bike wheels would look like under my handlebars as if I was ridiing on the track, listening to the same particular songs on my ipod for motivation.

A small tangent here, a digression back to the fifth grade and my favorite teacher.  He was about as tall as his students.  Mr.A (our nickname for Mr. Anderson) was a barrel-chested little person but I didn't notice it till years later because he was so cool.  He was the first teacher, the first person actually, who encouraged me to be myself.  I was a little kid, a couple years advanced and bright enough to be skipped again.  Tthat would have been ridiculous since I was already too small.  I would get my work done early in class, and he would let me spend time doing whatever, encouraging my creativity.  I distinctly remember making little scale models of parks out of construction paper.  I would start by making a rectangular tray, and then fill it in with ponds, benches, and oval or figure-8 tracks for bicycles, elevated roller-coaster paths for walking.  It was my way of creating a whimsical place that felt good in my difficult life.  No lie, I was building bicycle tracks when I was 9.  That memory faded away until I was several years into the actual Velodrome project, trying create a light-hearted park on the edge of a ghetto.  This was my life's ultimate Art Project; made with wood, steel, and tenacity.  It made me wonder about a life's purpose... still just a what if... but cruel if there wasn't anything to it.

There is a necessary role for the dreamer.  Visionaries help to break status quo, introduce new solutions.  Sorting through the banal with unique perspective, the random is reassembled into intriguing newness.  What is creative nature?  Is it obsession to improve things, the need for approval, resourcefulness within limits, or perspective outside boundaries?   Is it tenacity to the point of obsession, focus to the point of selfishness?  

Thankfully, a few devoted people did take over after a few years and worked hard to raise the serious money.  In 2012, Phase 1 of the Cleveland Velodrome opened to the public.  Presently they are raising funds for Phase 2 to cover it.   By chance I was there the day the track was finished and got a chance to ride it.  All I wanted to do was one thing: listen to those songs on my ipod and see my wheels under the handlebars on the track... in reality.  I didn't want to race or be recognized at some celebration.  I just wanted to ride a few laps, happy just to have a role in building it.  In less than a year there are already training programs, youth cycling classes, and teams competing.  Through community grants and volunteers, its all free to anyone under 18.  

Not to be forgotten, some thanks should go to one supportive teacher who helped a scrappy kid dream.    Schools measure math and science so valuable, for good reason.  But this favors one brain’s side of thinking.  Initiating and working for the construction of an urban renewal project and improving a neighborhood is traceable to the exact same idea assembled with clumsy school scissors, white glue, and construction paper, during 5th grade free time.

I can't wait to hear the news of some tough kid from East Cleveland getting to the Olympics.
Thy Nov 2024
I never understood why people cry over heartbreaks
perhaps because I cry over my family's financials
or that my parents never loved each other
or that my sister's attempting suicide
perhaps I understood that love is just a burden
from the endless divorce courts choosing sides
or the endless fights over our school's fees
that's why love was never a curiosity
it's a plauge that I tremendously avoided
I know it's meant to be that way,
to survive, I must be on my own
if love arrived,
prepare to bury me
for acknowledging things and feeling them
will destruct every piece of my existence
armchair patriots
fair weather
brothers in arms
foxhole liberalists
will fight for your
freedom
but not if you ask
not if you really need
liberation
and
only if
the financials
square
and
the fiduciaries
concur
and
you know
the polls are
favorable
Mateuš Conrad Feb 2022
title: chirp
body: sparrow, bold.    a 502 bad gateway bypass...


in the dimension of "things" pre-,
  i must be premeditating every possible scenario,
although i hate playing chess
i sometimes do... i'm more in favour of backgammon
but that's just me...
like i said to the other girls in the workforce:
wait... just wait... don't tell her i know...
so she was pressured... i put on the charm offensive:
there were already rumours of she *******
the supervisor... eh... i go to prostitutes...
what's the big deal? it's not like you use
a cloth to dry dishes with once: then get a new
one every single time... i always tend to buy
second hand books... they have a certain feel
to them... i'm not the sort of person who likes things
in mint condition...
everything leading up to this point just seems:
well-slotted, premeditated... but at least it
wasn't self-sabotage... i had to fall in love her...
in order to get at something: so she would retreat...
i wasn't even the "friend zone": i was in
the... "priest zone"... the "psychologist zone"...
the stuff i heard... and that's another thing...
there was no common language... some vague *******
barrier... we didn't really talk about music,
we didn't really talk about films or books...
we talked: well, she talked... i listened...
just talk about her son... and more about her son...
what a brilliant mother she was... back-stabbing
her friends... blah blah... oh... and plenty about her
exes... if i could... draw a schematic...
let's just say it wouldn't be a treasure map
with one              X marking the spot...
it would be more like:

  x                  x

  x  x        x          x

  x      x        x

with her good looks, back when she was in her 20s?
oh man... she was having a rave...
esp. since she worked in the financial sector,
so all the financials "jocks" would be all
over her... now she's in her... coming to 40...
well... imagine my dis-belief!
- and yet she's still playing a game of a 20 year
old party-****...    she's out to lunch...
obviously...

- and as much as i love women...
love: but sure-as-**** and a penny-drop i don't
want to understand them...
no-can do... why?
      makes my life easier and: ensures i'm
out of their hair... both parties satisfied...
i hope...
but it's not that i don't have something to do...
there's always something to do...
i'm already getting past the fact that at 35 i'm
living with my parents...
after all... the plan is...
they're not going into a care home...
i'll be there... and once i reach a certain age...
there's always Switzerland or the Benelux
euthanasia clinics... so...
plus i'm already the custodian of the property:
i do the cleaning, i do the cooking...
i do the d.i.y. - i pay them rent...
while the other option would be... what?
get a mortgage or pay rent to some stranger
and what? live alone?
no thanks.

i'm already over the disappoint of hoping for
a romance... yeah, my mother's pedicurist / manicurist
is coming over on Friday and she's bringing...
my new favourite lady...
my TOY... oh she's not even 1 year old...
she takes a **** into a ***** on the spot...
but she's disinhibited... she pokes my nose...
tugs at my beard, sits on my lap...
looks into my eyes like trying to hypnotise me...
she's yet to speak a word but i already
managed to teach her my mimic...
cluck... pluck... whatever the onomatopoeia
is... she reciprocated...

        here's to fulfilling the role of the: alt vater...
the old father...
she's not mine, but she's of my stock,
my ethnicity... obviously i'm going to go
for ethnic bias... everyone else is...
maybe that's what put Jeminah off... i'm a ******
and she's of Scotch English stock...
maybe i'm not black enough...
yeah... i must not be black or Pakistani enough...

she blocked me / deleted me on WhatsApp...
thank god i took that screenshot of her pretty face...
i think i'm going to listen to some The Cure
Pictures of You and attempt at glee...
what could have been...
her dog liked me... from the get go...
couldn't stop licking my ears... then started
to lick the wounds from me having put out
cigarette buts on my knuckles...
licked those scabs clean... i started bleeding:
she noticed... i didn't...
well... pain... it's a hyper-sensation...
you get used to it and afterwards... you sort of
ignore it... or... rather:
everything else is THERE... HERE...
that's a res extensa (extending "thing") when
meditating on Heidegger's dasein... weird, right?
how philosophy morphs... you read something in your
mid 20s... then it only becomes applicable in your
mid 30s... something so, so unpractical needs to
wait a while in your head... before it turns out to
be as useful as a ******* hammer...
who would have known?!

i'm guessing she blocked me because her son
had a conversation with her about...
is that my real dad? or... n'ah... that's me gloating...
what happened to that guy who made
that delicious banana loaf?
well... Freddy... mummy has... IS-USE...
            hyphen for an S...
                i could have seen it straight away:
i'd be bored after a week...
  there would be nothing to talk about...
  i don't remember even having said anything about
myself...
oh... but she ticked all the right boxes
when there were more people involved:
on that superficial interpersonal level with
the public... but she wouldn't...
she wouldn't allow for an explicit bond to take form...
it would always have to be implicit:
think about the starving children of Africa
sort of *******... what? the Somali pirates?!
the Nigerian scammers?!
those, "starving" children?
                      the ones with birth rates like
the harem of the sultan of Brunei?!
must be rich... hardly starving... if they're having
all those mouths to feed!

i already mentioned this little curiosity before:
it took **** Germany AND Soviet Russia...
longer... LON-GER to subdue the Polacks
than it took **** Germany to subdue the French...
the French... Napoleon... the French Colonial
Superpower... and these modern leftists "think" i'm
going to be easily swayed?!
pronoun dickly-squat my sore *** from
sitting on the toilet... and the feminists?!
            well... what's on offer, gentlemen?
let's... broaden our minds... Lawrence...
  (Prince's Partyman playing in the background)...

just like that lie i was told in my childhood:
that there are more women in the world
than men... i've been sleeping:
the opposite is true... and now we're supposed
to compete on already banged and bagged women?
that's the option?
maybe there was a rumour going about
my knuckle scars and the time i gave myself
a plum mascara pouch on my left eye
from having wrestled with myself...
turn-off... i get it...

  or... perhaps she's just into coke-addicts...
wouldn't know... i just drink a lot of coffee...
perhaps she's just into all the sort of range of *******...
but, seriously... if i can only be decent,
romantic, tender... with prostitutes...
at least it's in the open... there's a transparency
of a transaction...

the last text i sent her she didn't even read...
i was talking about the conundrum of:
the way into a man's heart is through his stomach...
i thought: well... given the stomach cramps...
that's a misnomer phraseology...
it's a ****** metaphor... because it can't be taken
oh too literally... why? i think the original meaning
has been lost...

the text?
yesah, to reiterate, thanks for these stomach cramps
flirting with butterflies...
although i'm a keen student of etymology, this has nothing
to do with etymology... the phrase:
the way to a man's heart is through his stomach...
the modern interpretation insinuates that a woman
ought to cook a decent meal for a man...
no... sorry... i can do the cooking myself...
i didn't choose to have these stomach cramps,
"transgender"et al. feeling like i'm giving birth
to nothing more than dizziness and watery eyes...
there's something quiet sinister afoot here,
i can't point in any sort of direction: it's almost
a malaise of disorientedneness...
sorry, i have to play this "role" for the forseeable
future if i'm going to get anything done...
you might as well pretend that i'm wearing
two masks to keep my cool... otherwise it's such
a welcoming prospect to write to someone
directly and see them in person than what i'm used to,
when writing... staring at a blank canvas...
or messaging someone who lives in... ******* Hawaii...
of all places...


see... problematic...
i am problematic... i exfoliate with language...
this is that, this isnt that... games...
or my other theory goes along the lines of:
she can't find me on social media...
she can't snoop on me...
i bet that's her grinding her teeth...
well: obviously i'm not going to give her access...
i'm writing about her...
i don't want her to find out what my narrative pursuit
is like her... of course she's the momentum bringer...
i'm not going to give that up: so easily...

she knows my first name...
maybe she typed that in, along with my ******
****** / Stalin sort of type of surname...
it has changed... i always argue:
there's a missing -SCH- in the Elert...
no... i'm not "alert"... let's pause there...
maybe she typed in Matthew with Conrad...
but then again... i tend to hide in my mother zunge...
Mateusz... and hide doubling down
on hiding the Z with a caron S...
i.e. Mateuš... well... she won't figure that crap
out... i'm prone to the pastt-ime of looking up
googlewhacks... while listening to Prince...
esp. Raspberry Beret...
or REM's happy shiny people...

  ha ha... 43, 300+ readers on one poem alone...
imagine: if i were paid a penny for merely that...
i'm groovy, i don't mind doing something
for: not even peanuts...
the art needs to stay alive...
i can't allow the last avenue of freedom
to go "missing"... i'll just pay myself
with FEELZ... self-help my ***... therapy my ***...
but if you're inclined to be the sort of
******... tired of watching *******...
hey... my legs are spread wide-open...
or rather: someone scalped me...
then took a massive chunk of my skull off
and now my brain is wired
to a pickle jar... for pickled: transparent
brains... jelly-fish territory...

              ha... prior to protein... prior to sinew...
          prior to bone...
what did we have? gelatin floating about
in salt water... nice... rubber stamps of:
oogle doodle do no good but leave numbing
sparks of mini-lightning storms of:
lazy gods began thinking...
    my my... as expected: it took them a while...
******* hedonists... ambrosia custard soon
to be wise-ups, but all the way prior?
crazed ***** and complete hard-on morons...
the gods...
funny that... you can't go mad twice...
they took a stab at me once...
                      sorry for being the party pooper...
i sort of can't go mad, twice...
i literally missed nothing on the dating scene having
been a recluse in my 20s... apparently...
self-evidently...

now? i'm going to make some Silesian gnocchi
for today's dinner, i've already cleaned the house...
i'll be making some curry for my parents for tomorrow...
play the chemist with the spices available...
i might make myself some lunch for tomorrow's shift...
hey, life... plenty of it...
  but... oddly enough: not enough people in it...
no matter... i can at least ping-pong backwards
and forwards with my own words to: eh: ech... echo echo O!

sure... it would have been nice to play
the surrogate father... perhaps we could have learned
German together...
i could have cooked for the pair of them:
i never know how to cook for one person to begin with...
but if she's into boxers and coke-heads...
hey... Pontius Pilate...
i have to left hands... and their pointing outward...
if i tried... then i shouldn't have tried... to begin with...
if modern women are going to be their stupid
selves... so be it... there's always the night,
the forest, the moon, there's always the scent
of autumn... there are so many things that can keep
me disorientated in an orientated sort of way
that... all the lies from the 1990s Rom-Coms can
fizzle out...

maybe being love is a luxury that not even
the richest in the world can buy...
thank god i don't earn the sort of money
that might attract gadflies...
  thank god i earn what is necessary...
            who's not going to buy those Valentine
flowers, those anniversary "sputniks"...
those sofas... those iPhones for the kids...
me!
                              i'll be buying food... etc.
better spend money on food than on a doctor...
that's how the saying goes...
to hell with women and all their superficial
*******... and if i'm in dire straits because
the bone-**** of a hand is not enough?
£120 for an hour with a Turkish *******...
problem solved!

i just can't stomach being an ******* in order
for women to stick around...
something so deep as: self-integrity is making
potential suitors turn me off...
esp. given their past histories...
i don't want to be an ******* when it comes
to loving women... and no... i'm not nice...
one thing i've learned from the English is...
******* Thespian crowd... actors...
two-faced juxtaposition makers...
or... or? they sing, they dance...
a nation of alcoholics or workaholics...
  but if i have to be this sort of ******* that women
feel the need to fix?
no... covert: under the radar...
i'm not doing that crap...
                    i'm not going to be a ****** man just
because a woman might find that appealing
to hone in on her lost archetypical requirements...
she's going to **** it up anyways...
  she always does...
                      i'll just be me... do me...
and if i'm predisposed to have to have to give
off steam with some bedroom antics...
i'll go the the women that still crave masculine
sensibility... prostitutes!
Mitchell Aug 2020
I hate eyes
I hate

You

And
I hate I need to show you
What I do

To reciprocate

Financials.

Imagine

All the dead
All the dead
In the love
That could never
Show you
They meant a **** and then

They died alone.

Imagine that,
Imagine what you did
To them to prove

The worth

Of a Dollar.

They'll never dance again
They'll never dance
As they
Hoped
Again.

We are in a state of
No more of this.

Of nothing left and then we said -

OK.

Goodnight.
Let it be.

Imagine resisting your brother
Your sister
When they want to **** you

For legacy
For notoriety
For continuation

For

For

For just one more note
In an orchestra

Of the misremembered.

— The End —