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How a Shared Vision Quietly Became a One-Person Plan Growth is non-negotiable in any fast-moving industry. Technology advances, client expectations rise, and scale increasingly matters. Human-capital-intensive businesses—wealth management, asset management, retirement consulting—are no exception. For owners and CEOs, the pressure is constant: grow faster, expand sooner, and stay ahead of increasingly well-capitalized competitors. Acquisitions often…

I’ve collected a lot of things over my career — business cards, term sheets, airline miles. But this one’s different. “Everyone knows I’m in over my head.” — The Fray Steve Mullins interviewed me when I applied to Dartmouth. Class of ’54. His office had dark green walls, and he wore a dark green sport…

“It could have been me.” (The Struts) I spent more than a decade as an investment banker. 100-hour weeks. 100,000-mile domestic flier every year. Full staff working the weekends with lunch and dinner provided. All day meetings from breakfast to bed. Mergers, acquisitions, sales, IPOs, secondaries, restructurings. I worked on things that were in the…

“You’ve gotta live to learn. You’ve gotta crash and burn.” – Darius Rucker Every career has moments where one mistake feels like it could end everything. This was mine. We’d spent three straight weeks of all-nighters chasing a $1.2 billion deal for one of our best private equity clients. No sleep. Endless revisions. By the…

“Living in the limelight, the universal dream” (Rush) I had a couple of hours to kill in Miami between a meeting and dinner, so I wandered out to the Delano Hotel’s tiki bar with my laptop and an iced tea. It started pouring — standard June in South Beach. There was only one other guy…