OC Business Journal

EXECS:

Paul Black on overcoming a down period at Laguna Beach wealth manager

Editor’s Note: Paul Black, CEO of WCM Investment Management, wrote the following post last July about managing and overcoming challenges during the past 20 years:

Manage a $4 billion large-cap domestic growth firm. Underperform dramatically for five years. Get fired from almost all $4 billion of assets.

Never fire an employee or lower their compensation. Take all the income hit at the principal owner level.

Launch an international growth strategy, which your firm has never done, and have it run by a PM (portfolio manager) straight out of operations with no portfolio management experience. Figure out how to trade foreign ordinaries and currencies for the first time.

Add an inexperienced analyst after three years to join the inexperienced operations PM. Tell the new international PMs—with no experience crafting or telling a story and only a few years of experience managing money—to get on the road to tell the story.

To make it more difficult, only have $3 million in the three-year track record.

For fun, add a new analyst who dropped out of Columbia Business School thinking he ought to just open a hamburger stand.

Don’t expect any help from the founders— they’re all experiencing PTSD.

Go for it!

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2022-01-17T08:00:00.0000000Z

2022-01-17T08:00:00.0000000Z

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