A Practical Guide to Building and Sustaining an Investment Management Business
This book will be coming soon. I am just editing it right now!
Why This Book Exists
The investment industry is full of intelligent, capable professionals.
It is not full of honest discussions about risk beyond the portfolio.
This book was written to address that gap.
It focuses on the risks that compound slowly:
- Career risk
- Governance drift
- Compliance misunderstandings
- Incentive misalignment
- Ownership and succession blind spots
These are rarely urgent—until suddenly they are.
What This Book Is (and Is Not)
This is not:
- A technical investing textbook
- A motivational business book
- A collection of generic best practices
It is:
- A field guide grounded in real situations
- A synthesis of experience across multiple firm roles
- A framework for thinking clearly about long-term outcomes
Core Themes Covered
Career Risk and Longevity
Why technically strong professionals still find themselves marginalized, stalled, or exposed later in their careers—and how to think differently about long-term positioning.
Compliance as a Risk Framework
How compliance is meant to function, why it often fails in practice, and how firms unintentionally create more risk by treating it as a checklist.
Investment Governance
Decision-making structures, committee dynamics, accountability, and the quiet erosion of discipline over time.
Growth, Incentives, and Control
Why growth introduces fragility, how incentives shape behaviour, and why ownership structures matter earlier than most firms expect.
Succession and Continuity
The realities of transition—planned and unplanned—and the cost of avoiding the conversation.
What You Will Take Away
Readers consistently gain:
- Better mental models for complex decisions
- Language to articulate concerns before they become problems
- A clearer view of how regulators, boards, and stakeholders actually think
- Perspective that only comes from having seen multiple cycles
This book is often described as useful in hindsight.
The goal is to make it useful before hindsight is required.