The Short Story:
I’ve worked with and helped companies from just about every perch in the communications business: writer, agency head, freelance journalist, publicist, author, copywriter, consultant, reporter, account executive, communications manager and editor.
I get hired for my specialized expertise and experience, which at 40 years and counting, has enabled me to offer advice to clients, that for many, has proven invaluable.
Probably the best part of my job is working with business owners, executives and entrepreneurs. Along the way I’ve met a gallery of heros, fools, visionaries and rogues. But they’ve all taught me something, and with each new assignment, I try to pay it forward.
The Long Story:
I entered the 40th year of my career in 2022. Like many career paths, there’s been twists and turns, but from a broader perspective, it’s revolved around financial journalism, media relations with a bit of entrepreneurship tossed in.
Every Time I Thought I Got Away . . .
Writing and journalism began with my first job as an associate for a publication tracking initial public offerings. Though this was just a two year stint, during that time I reviewed over 2,000 IPO prospectuses, wrote hundreds of articles and associated research projects and what I learned about the mechanics of the market and investment banking stuck with me.
Despite my best efforts early on to get into finance rather than just writing about it, I never truly got away. There was a post at an investment bank in syndicate, and later corporate finance, but after the firm dissolved, I was back to earning a living with my pen, and for several years wrote for a variety of media outlets.
Calling Wall Street
Because I knew a lot of public company executives from my stint in investment banking, I ended up working for a lot of companies on their investor communications. It turned out journalism and financial communications were a very good fit. To be effective you had to be, above all, truthful, but still tell a persuasive, compelling story.
And there were good stories to tell, not about the arcane mechanics of any one business, but rather about how shifts in economies, markets, regulations and technologies were creating new opportunities and how my clients would capitalize on these opportunities to grow the bottom line. It was all very heady, strategic stuff.
This was a fruitful period in journalism too. I wrote five books, one of them published by Bloomberg, which won accolades and was ranked “five stars” by the Wall Street Journal for entrepreneurs looking to raise money. In addition, I wrote a column in Entrepreneur magazine about raising money, and another about business tax.
Ultimately, I took a job at a large, swaggering, very well capitalized trading firm with global operations. They had just started offering equity research to bulk up their block trading business and they wanted someone to pitch their analysts to the media. For me, this was like shooting fish in a barrel, and I fired away for five years, building a good network of contacts in the media.
Act III
For my next act, and what remains my current act, I recasted as a solo consultant providing editorial and media relations services to the financial services industry. It’s important to note that in laymen’s terms, “financial services” might mean stocks, bonds, and investments.
Yes, that part of it, but there’s so much more. And my particular pedigree enabled me to tackle assignments that very few could. Really. I like to call my work in finance “industrial strength”.
Credentials
After 40 years, educational credentials become less relevant, but nonetheless here they are. I earned a Bachelor’s degree at Denison University in mathematics and economics. Later I earned a Master of Science degree in finance at Temple University.
These may appear unlikely choices for a career that deals largely with words. But, as I like to say, students are in no position to evaluate the relevance of their studies until long after they are completed. In this case, mathematics turned out to be a very good proctor for writing. It provokes brevity, precision and above all else, the maintenance of order, from the top of an idea to the bottom of it. And of course for a career in the financial markets, training in economics and finance has come in handy too.
Industrial Strength Cases
- There was a specialty finance firm that created a whole new class of asset backed securities, and they needed to communicate to fixed income, institutional investors their hybrid bond was “uncorrelated” to the market at large, and was indeed a unicorn offering more yield at less risk.
- There were investment banks that produced research on very narrow industries, such as construction materials, or industrial equipment manufacturing that wanted to get media exposure for their analysts not in USAToday, but IndustryWeek.
- There were market strategists who wanted to be on CNBC to talk about Fed policy, ETF imbalances and what the options market was telling equity investors.
- There was a hybrid advisory firm buying and selling community banks that wanted the gravitas a book offered to convince private equity and other investors they should go along for the ride.
- And there were several the Big Four accounting firms that wanted to bolster their “thought leadership” in a variety of practices with position papers on how new accounting regulations for reporting credit risk would affect multinational finance companies, or how the allocation of HQ expenses could impact the corporate tax rate, or how R&D investments should be expensed or capitalized on the balance sheet.
Forty years of working with chief executives and entrepreneurs, communicating business strategy at its’ highest levels to financial audiences of every stripe and motivation — and experiencing what worked and what didn’t — has come home to roost. There are many highly qualified peers of mine out there. I can’t do everything. But I can say with confidence, there are some things I can do that no one else can.
Credentials
After 40 years, educational credentials become less relevant, but nonetheless here they are. I earned a Bachelor’s degree at Denison University in mathematics and economics. Later I earned a Master of Science degree in finance at Temple University.
These may appear unlikely choices for a career that deals largely with words. But, as I like to say, students are in no position to evaluate the relevance of their studies until long after they are completed. In this case, mathematics turned out to be a very good proctor for writing. It provokes brevity, precision and above all else, the maintenance of order, from the top of an idea to the bottom of it. And of course for a career in the financial markets, training in economics and finance has come in handy too.
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