I spoke recently at the WestPoint Financial Rally, an annual gathering of hundreds of their team members meant to motivate and inspire. Below is an excerpt from that speech. 

Speaking before you is a bit daunting. After all, WestPoint is a bar-setting financial services company built on planning, stewardship, and helping people prepare for their financial  futures. In all honesty, I could easily be the poster child for what not to do financially. The restaurant industry is known for a lot of things, failures and razor-thin margins being two of them. I'm pretty sure none of you has ever said to a client, "You know what you should do? Get out of the market, get out of bonds, forget the S&P 500, and park all your money in some random person's start-up Asian-Italian-South American fusion restaurant."

But I digress.

WestPoint is at the center of helping people prepare for their future. Planning is in many of your job titles. WestPoint's home page speaks of providing "a secure path forward." and wealth creation is, for most, is the ultimate future-proofing hack. 

A few Sundays ago, just as I was putting the finishing touches on the talk I'm giving you today, I found myself invited into an unusual WhatsApp group conversation. It had been created by the founder of a tech company, a self-made centi-millionaire, someone I've never actually met in person. We were introduced through a mutual friend, another founder, and our relationship consisted of little more than a handful of introductory emails and an invitation to stay connected.

At first glance, we didn't appear to have much in common. She was in the tech world; I was in hospitality. She was in her mid-forties; I had just turned seventy. Her business had yet to reach its fifth anniversary; mine was thirty-five years old.

The technology her company provided, in theory, could be accessed from anywhere in  the world. My restaurants - all located within a 15 minute drive of one another - were, by contrast, hyper-local. And our balance sheets looked nothing alike, separated by a few zeros and a comma or two.

But we shared something far more important. We had both recently exited businesses that had, at least for a period of time, defined our identities. Even if our financial outcomes were vastly different, our emotional outcomes were remarkably similar.

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