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GO IT ALONE!

  • In 1998, David Drucker, one of the nation’s top investment advisers, decided, for lifestyle reasons, to move from Washington, D.C. to Albuquerque, New Mexico. Drucker was named to Worth magazine’s list of the nation’s best advisers from 1994 through 2001. In the move, Drucker retained 45 East Coast accounts but did not want to reestablish a traditional office with multiple employees. In Washington, he had had one partner and several employees. Drucker concluded that he could build a virtual office by working with a variety of independent providers, that this setup would allow him to efficiently operate without employees, and that it would lead both to a higher profit margin and a personally more rewarding business.

  • Drucker did not want employees largely because of the high responsibility they represent. He believes that if he has employees, he must be responsible not just for their financial well-being but also for mentoring them. When he moved to New Mexico (at about age 50), he was at the stage of his life that he no longer wanted this burden.

  • Other successful investment advisers, such as Greg Curry of Louisville, Kentucky, operate without employees for an entirely different reason: They feel they are not talented employers. “Managing employees, for me, is always a train wreck,” says Curry in an industry publication. “Doing things this way, I believe I can be a lot more efficient. I’ve backed into what this business needs to generate so I can have a good life without causing me to have to work eighty hours a week, half of that managing other people,” he adds.

  • An important aspect of the investment management business is sending accurate, timely reports to clients. These reports must meet certain regulatory requirements, and they require that a skilled individual download and format the information from the client’s brokerage or custodial account. Krisan’s BackOffice (www.Krisan.com), a go-it-alone firm run by

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    GO IT ALONE! Copyright 2004 by Bruce Judson. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved.