Why am I doing this?

A new endeavor in close proximity to the core of my being

I entered the financial advisory profession as a trainee at PaineWebber 25 years ago, just in time for UBS to come in and massively overpay to buy the PaineWebber franchise. I had spent the first seven years of my adult life working 18+ hours a day building out a music management firm (and corresponding booking agency). It started as a hobby as a I figured out what to do with my life but it turned into a career and a passion when my dad died just as I was entering my 20’s. For reasons I talk about in my book, Full-Time: Work and the Meaning of Life, this business venture became cathartic for me - providing a vehicle for useful activity as I sorted through the trauma of losing dad and at the same time losing clarity about what I was supposed to do with my life. I learned a lot in those seven years, I made a few bucks, and I developed the self-confidence (some of it warranted and some if it foolish) that would serve me well when I entered my next career path - the one God put me on earth to do. Because the music business I ran evolved into something real, with offices in Nashville, TN and Newport Beach, CA, employing quite a few people and representing some significant artists in the Christian music world, I ended up being able to participate in the stock market fun of the 1990’s. I didn’t have an advisor, mind you, I had a broker (or two), and we traded absurd dotcom and tech stocks and had a ton of fun doing it. It was exciting. It was energetic. And it also cost me every penny I had accumulated (I think it is possible the margin balance was negative by the time the dotcom enforcement gods were done, but I can’t recall). All I knew was I really, really didn’t belong long-term in the music business, and I really, really loved the stock market.

There are two experiences embodied in that attempt to capture in one paragraph what actually played out over seven years in my life. First, I entered the financial advisor profession with a pre-learned lesson that would come in very handy later: You have to like who you work with. Musicians were a tricky group for a non—musician like me. I fell into it in the early/mid 1990’s, but it was never really for me. I am not cool enough or nearly irresponsible enough to truly belong in that world, and I assure you they felt the same about me. But the other experience was that of having money, but not having any advice. I craved (and did a pretty good job creating) financial organization, but for me a portfolio was a random collection of stocks that we bought cheap and traded higher in a constant game of greater fool theory, a game that could be played well because there were a lot more fools than money in the late 1990’s. I just didn’t know I would be one of them. But I did know that a career in the financial advisory world sounded like a dream to me.

I had an office for my music business down at the Lido Marina Village in Newport Beach and there was a little watering hole just steps from the office I used to make my nighttime dining room (I assure you I used to be a lot cooler than I am now, or at least I thought I was). I met a gentleman down at the bar in George’s Camelot restaurant named Mike Gayner, and we would become dear friends. Mike had been in the finance world since he graduated UCLA in the 1960’s, and done stints at Bateman Eichler, then Jefferies, then ending up at Paine Webber. He covered middle markets trading and research for small hedge funds, and smoked filerless Paul Mall’s and shared storied about the good old days like it was his job. I loved the guy, and he loved me, and I think he believed the same thing I did about myself by this point: That I was not long for the world of music management, and the stock market suited me better.

My largest music client fired me 25 years ago and that helped expedite things (funny how that works). Usually people say these things with a sense of regret or pain or challenge, but for me it was the most liberating thing that ever happened. Though I was engaged to be married, fresh off of blowing up many years of financial accumulation from my trading of QuePasa.com, Visual Data Corp, CMGI, and other companies that did less revenue than my nightly bar tab with Gayner, and about to turn 27 years old, I was truly ready for a career reinvention. Mike suggested I interview with the training manager at Paine Webber, and they made the decision to hire me that summer. I found a buyer for my agency, I actually did have a couple bucks put aside, I sold my condo in Newport, and I took the 80% pay cut that the training program represented - all the things you and your fiance dream of when you plan a life together.

But it was a dream. Because I was entering the greatest business in the history of the world at a perfect time. The investing public was chock-full of people like me over the last few years - people who thought investing was stock-picking and stock-trading and margin-regulating, and who had never received any advice worthy of the name. What I did not know was that another two things were about to happen for me:

(1) We would enter a bear market that would last until October of 2002, providing the greatest gift for someone relentlessly prospecting that anyone will ever find (I wouldn’t get such a gift again until 2007-2008, and that would prove to be an even greater career blessing); and

(2) The world of transactional business in financial services was coming to an end, its 8th or 9th inning having arrived just as I showed up with a cheap suit, pack of cigarettes, and the script of every Hollywood movie ever made about Wall Street memorized. The industry’s new phase of “fee-based business” was here, and I barely even got the memo that it represented something different. From the very, very, very first account I ever opened, the new lexicon of “advisory” and “consultative” and “fee-based” were all I ever knew. I certainly did not deserve to be so lucky.

I have to fast forward now to the reason I am writing this post which basically covers the reason I am starting the B2Bahnsen Substack. I was introduced to someone by the name of Nick Murray in my very first month in the business (h/t Kevin Reid, Merrill Lynch). I devoured his newsletter (which came in the mail then) and read his Excellent Investment Advisor book, followed by his New Financial Advisor book. I also worked from 5am-8pm every single day, believing that I now had two full-time jobs: One to learn how to become a financial advisor, and another to grow a business where people would let me be their financial advisor. I shared a Client Service Associate with a group of other advisors (as we all did), and I was 100% on my own. After I started experiencing success in asset gathering I had several senior guys in the office ask me to join their team, and the guarantee it came with that they would assure me the assets necessary to hit the $2,500 first quintile quarterly bonuses was tempting. But I was too naive and too self-assured to understand that over 90% of trainees failed (thank God), and I never really considered any path other than that of being my own solo practitioner.

I read and read and read, studied and studied and studied, and worked and worked and worked. And I am sure the future of this substack will give me ample opportunity to share more about the lessons of 2001-2007 at UBS, but I made it. By 2007 I was a million-dollar producer, had over a $100 million book, and was getting calls throughout 2006 and 2007 from “recruiters.” I somehow had the sense to say no to very aggressive efforts to get me to join Bear Stearns as they considered opening an Orange County office in 2006/07. I was flattered, my ego loved it, and yet it just didn’t feel right for some reason.

You will detect from me many, many instances where the undeserved grace of God smiled upon me and performed vast safety upon my career unbeknownst to me. These instances were plentiful, undeserved, and not always instantly recognizable. Today, I think about them all the time.

Anyways, I did end up moving to Morgan Stanley in the spring of 2007. My $100 million book grew about 6x there in the years that followed. I will write plenty more in the future about how the years of the financial crisis changed my life, my career, my marriage, and my future. But my decent business became a great business at Morgan Stanley, and I enjoyed a long run of building a very productive vertical team, becoming a $5 million producer, and ultimately, realizing by age forty that the right home for me was one with my name on it. I left Morgan ten years ago to start my own firm, and have never looked back. We passed $7 billion in assets under management last month, we now have 76 employees on the payroll, and we will soon open our tenth office. Now I am really fast-forwarding …

I have no doubt others in the business have been more successful than I have. I assume it is true. We are never as terminally unique as we think we are. I do now have 25 years of lessons learned, experiences gathered, and opinions formed, and a big part of those center around how to grow a financial advisory practice, how to serve clients, how to build a team, and how to manage a practice. I feel the same passion for this business today as I have since I was 26 years old, and I have the same zeal and ambition as I did when I was a starving newlywed. I do not expect a ton of advisors to care what I have to say, but I benefitted so much in the early part of my career, and in every peak and valley since, from the wisdom and experience of those who poured into me, that I just feel a call to share a little of my own journey from time to time in this substack. I do not think all of my opinions are gospel. Some are normative (i.e. don’t do bad things) and some are merely preferential (don’t do technical analysis), but they are all my experiences, thoughts, and feelings from what has so far been a 25-year career. If I ever share anything that benefits you and your business, it will be a privilege and blessing to me.

I am not a karma guy, but I know what people mean when they use the term, and I do believe in a life and spirit of gratitude. And that is what B2Bahnsen is - an expression of my gratitude to the greatest career a person could ever pray for. My journey is not complete, I have many more goals in front of me, and many more things we at The Bahnsen Group intend to do. But I am in a place to share my love for this business and a few lessons I’ve learned along the way. That, my friends, is the essence of B2Bahnsen. Welcome aboard, and please reach out any time!