Baby Boomer Entrepreneurial Blues

I have to count myself one lucky man. There I was at our first ever Wealth Management Industry Outlook, and I had 25 or so of the sharpest minds in the business talking precisely about me.

No “talking” isn’t exactly the right word, “complaining” might be closer to it. Frankly, I was feeling the heat.

It seems that there is a whole class of people just like me, entrepreneurial baby boomers who have a lifelong habit of managing all the workaday assets in their grasp and a deep reluctance to turn those assets or responsibilities over to anyone else. Financial advisers, so I’ve learned, know these people quite well.

And yes, I am a baby-boomer. I am tired, however, of hearing about those people born in the 1940s who think they own the boom. The boom officially continued until 1963, and there were many more Americans born in the late 1950s then there were in late 1940s. The older boomers took all the cushy jobs, and the younger ones, like myself, had to make their own way.

And that’s where the problem begins. Those of us who have invested in our own business do so because we think we can control the outcome. The harder and smarter we work, the more control we have. There will always be market forces beyond our grasp, but most are within it, and if we are really savvy, we can anticipate many of the external changes in the market. In some ways, it is like the difference between poker and blackjack. A blackjack player has some control over the success of his investment. A poker player has a lot.

One more thing. Most of us grew up in bigger families than our children have. Many of us, me included, do not have a natural heir eager to take over the business. And if my daughters are eager, they have done a brilliant job disguising it.

What this means is that sometime in the not so distant future I will reluctantly turn the business over to some younger entrepreneur or staff of them, and then I will be expected to turn the resulting assets over to my “trusted adviser.”

Trust matters hugely in the investment business. People build their careers on it. And yet, as much as I might trust this adviser, I will watch our assets be largely controlled by someone other than my wife and I. 

As they say, a man who represents himself in court has a fool for a client. The same is mostly true in the markets. I know it would be for me. When it comes to market investments, I’m less sure of what I am doing. I will hire an adviser precisely because he knows more than I do, but then I will promptly forget everything I just said and second-guess them until the bulls come home. 

The best advisers will know exactly to handle folks like us. When Hank Herrmann of Waddell & Reed was asked how do advisers deal with entrepreneurial control freaks, he just smiled knowingly. “My answer,” he said, “is that everybody in this room has figured out how to do that or they wouldn’t be successful.” He called it “soft knowledge” and conceded “I’m just not quite sure how that works.”

I’m not sure I do either, but I guess that one day I and just about every reader we deliver Ingram’s to each month will surely find out.

Regards,

Editor-In-Chief & Publisher

Editorial@IngramsOnLine.com