Meeting with Rob Pasick (Part 1)

Upon recommendation from a friend, I met with Dr. Robert Pasick one year ago. I composed this post (never finished) to serve as personal notes of that session.

Rob is an executive coach. I’m not sure if my referral had friendly contact or business in mind, but Rob is all business and he made that quite clear.

Not that I should really expect anything less—and I don’t. If ever the end product is making money, then it would seem a willingness to pay for the service is in order. I discussed this in the second paragraph here.

I started by reciting my 60-second elevator pitch:

     > After working several years as a staff pharmacist and pharmacy manager, I retired
     > to start a securities trading business at the age of 36. This has been a journey
     > without clients or co-workers that has required extensive self-study, intrinsic
     > motivation, and outside-the-box thinking. I have since learned a great deal about
     > the mechanics of trading and investing. I have succeeded at replacing a six-figure
     > pharmacist salary by posting average annual returns in excess of 15% from 2007
     > onward. Having risked my own hard-earned capital to learn the craft, I now seek
     > to manage wealth for others.

I explained some of my road blocks. The main one is lack of a sales background (see fourth paragraph here). Another is the fact that I trade options, which the financial industry views as extremely risky (as discussed here). He later noted the lack of a network of wealthy individuals who say “here’s a few million for you to manage… we love you, Mark!” is another block for me.

I have recently felt the need to really “network my *ss off” to get this business going. I also consider networking to be a weakness since I am not practiced at it.

Rob did not understand my sense of loneliness, which I proceeded to clarify. I said I have been unsuccessful at finding other full-time, independent, retail traders like myself (not of retirement age, but that’s not as important provided they have sufficient interest and dedication to collaborate) who trade for a living. In the absence of an investment advisory, which is probably #1 on my list of desired next steps, I could potentially form a research team to build the automated backtester (see paragraph #8 here) and proceed with my extensive list of research topics. That could shape my future trading* and/or serve as a foundation for professionally managed accounts.

I will continue next time.

* — I have since become more interested in trading futures, as discussed in many posts since (e.g. here).