It's Fun to Build a Network From Scratch!

Have you ever tried to build an organization from something small into something pretty big? I have. But it can take years! The first success (my CPA firm) took 28 years. The second (Buckingham/BAM) was 21 years.

I'm into my third such attempt now, creating a network of financial organizations that consider themselves to be in the wealth and asset management (WAM) arena. That includes brokerage firms, registered investment advisory firms, law firms, insurance based operations and not-for-profit associations composed of professionals from the WAM field. We're calling it the WAM Praxis Network.

As an Executive in Residence at the Olin School of Business at Washington University in St. Louis, I've been working on this project since the start on 2016 after retiring from Buckingham at the end of 2015. In conjunction with one of the finance faculty, we started by planning and holding in August the first Wealth and Asset Management research Conference. It was sold out in advance of the conference, letting us know that we were on to something good. Here's what the conference looked like:

https://apps.olin.wustl.edu/conf/cfar-wim/Home/Default.aspx?pid=15

By the time of that WAM Research conference, we were able to announce our new Olin masters of finance in wealth and asset management track, something that we were also able to develop over my first 8 months here. The new one year WAM masters program will begin in 2017. We don't think there will be anything quite like this particular advanced WAM educational degree in the country. You can read a little about it here:

https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/here-new-wealth-asset-management-masters-finance-olin-stuart?trk=pulse_spock-articles

There were 9 major sponsors of our first conference in August. You can see their logos at the bottom of the conference agenda. Those 9 became the first members of our new network. By the time we held the first quarterly meeting on campus of the network, we were up to 11 companies and organizations. We have identified over 40 local entities who would qualify to be part of our network and the goal is to get them to join with us in developing the best practices for WAM.

It's still a dream at this point to have all 40 of them join us, but no one has yet given us a hard "no". All we have spoken with seem to think our WAM initiatives are great ideas. Most say they would like to become involved somehow. Some have said yes. Many are currently giving it serious consideration. Some have said the modest yearly cost was not in their 2016 budget, but they are considering it for 2017. And some have not yet been approached by us.

Like I said, these things take a little time. Stay tuned.