[NEW SCRA] Investor Relations Strategy Proposal

We remain focused on a Year of Consulting Sales. In an earlier post, we laid out the program and explained the five sales meetings. The documents from those meetings and the explanation will soon be loaded.

1. We have just released the Investor Relations Strategy Proposal, the third engagement generated by those five sales meetings. It is accessible within the Strategy Control Room, Advanced Level.

2. The full engagement from this proposal is also available in SCRA.

In Building a Consulting Practice, our big theme is how we built out the practice from those five meetings.

***

This proposal template outlines an 8-week engagement to help a company better understand and address potential gaps between share price and intrinsic value. The proposal establishes a structured approach divided into four key phases: developing a shareholder value measurement framework, creating a targeted questionnaire, implementing the questionnaire with shareholders, and analyzing feedback to inform strategy. The document includes specific timelines for each phase and clearly defines deliverables, team structure, and fees. 

The proposal shows how to evaluate whether undervaluation stems from communication issues or operational fundamentals through shareholder segmentation and analysis. 

This template would be valuable for consultants working with publicly traded companies facing investor relations challenges, particularly when needing to align board understanding with shareholder expectations. It provides a professional framework for presenting complex financial analysis processes while maintaining a focus on actionable outcomes that links strategic planning and shareholder communication.

HOW TO FIND INVESTOR RELATIONS STRATEGY:

1. Log in to The Strategy Control Room, Advanced Level, membership area.
2. See the "PROPOSALS" dropdown. 
3. Select "36 Investor Relations Strategy Proposal"

If you are The Strategy Control Room, Advanced Level, member, here is the direct link to this particular update.

If you joined an Advanced Level of the Strategy Control Room today, you would find the most powerful strategy, problem-solving, consulting, and results-oriented leadership reading library in the world. The resources include:

• Michael's explanation slides for selected programs on StrategyTraining.com

• 13 full engagements

• Change Management Influence & Persuasion Center of Excellence 

• Detailed Business Case Methodology Center of Excellence 

• Encyclopedia of Strategy Analyses Center of Excellence 

• Corporate Training Center of Excellence

• One-Week Immersion: Consulting Onboarding / Consulting Mastery Center of Excellence

• 36 proposals

• Flipcharts

• Layout guides

• 17 strategy and problem-solving books which we do not make available anywhere else

• 2 brand new strategy and problem-solving books just released and not available anywhere else

• 11 book drafts never before available and not available anywhere else

• Case interview materials for Felix, Rafik, Samantha, and Sanjeev, case interview exhibits, case interview solutions

• The evolution of corporate strategy

• The business case toolkit

• Implementation and operation toolkit

• Corporate strategy toolkit

• Strategy maps

• And more 

Enroll as a Strategy Control Room Advanced Member

Missing One Crucial Step in a Business Case Can Turn
A Winning Strategy Into a Costly Failure

As part of our Year of Sales theme, we also focus on how strategy/business consultants within audit firms should effectively compete against more focused strategy firms. We refer to them as Audit-Based Consultants (ABCs) even though they reside within an audit firm's consulting division. Given the nature of their firms, many audit-based consultants have asked for dedicated and specific help. This program continues this effort within Insider, Legacy, and SCRA for ABCs.

ABCs can deliver strikingly superior results and value for their clients by leveraging the unique skills and assets of audit firms.

Please assume there are no errors, mistakes, miscalculations, or overly optimistic assumptions that would make the business cases in the following example misleading. We will show you that a critical final step is missing even though everything else was done correctly in a business case. It is a step that only audit firms can perform.

Most business cases/benefits cases in any consulting engagement forecast the increased earnings from undertaking the recommendations, after deducting the cost of implementation. These earnings are discounted back to adjust for inflation. While variations exist, this is the standard approach. The increased earnings are then incorporated into the cash flows and presented as numbers at the end of the study. This number is almost always incorrect.

Hard Lessons For A Client

We once advised a multi-billion dollar market cap client that wanted to enter a new sector. Their goal was to both find new sources of earnings and share price growth, and diversify their revenue streams. We developed an effective business case for them. Everything was correct, from the assumptions to the calculations. It should be noted that many of our assumptions included a range, as precise forecasting is impossible. 

We will discuss this case study in greater detail in the upcoming Insider/Legacy program. Yet, here is the gist:

The client had a new CEO who was unfamiliar with the sector. He assumed that as long as he could raise capital, gain board approval and secure regulatory permission, he could deliver the business case. We advised him carefully that one critical step remained, which only he could lead. If not managed well, projected earnings could fall by 20-40%. We recommended he hire PwC to do the final step calculations. He declined to do so.

Confident in his abilities, he rushed ahead. The new division turned into a quagmire. It sucked up capital while delivering lower earnings than the company's traditional cash cows. The share price slumped; years later, the company offloaded the division.

For those wondering what went wrong, this is not about the cost of capital, inflation, or execution. You can have the lowest cost of capital, with the lowest inflation, and run your operations perfectly, and have the best markets, and this final step, if not completed, will haunt you.

The error was not in the implementation. The strategy was sound. The financing was optimal. The operations were near best-in-class. Yet, one crucial piece was overlooked.

Are these companies performing the same?

US Company:

Delivered earnings of $1Bn.

Revenue of $10Bn.

Dutch Company:

Delivered earnings of $1Bn.

Revenue of $10Bn.

Assuming market share, growth, competition, product standing, branding, and risks are similar, the American company will still have a higher valuation. Why? Because a crucial step in the business case was missing. When you account for it, valuation gaps become clear. 

In This Program, We Will Explain:

- The crucial missing step in business cases.
- Why integrating this step significantly alters strategy recommendations. In many cases, it will lead to a decision not to enter a product or market.
- The specific calculation or metric that should conclude every business case.
- Why this metric is essential to a business's performance.
- Why, and this is key, audit firms are the best positioned to complete this step.
- Why ABCs should restructure their business case methodology to highlight this step, and compete on this difference.

Simple & Powerful

This is not going to be a long and complicated program on business cases. It builds on what we have already extensively taught and brought together in The Strategy Journal and Succeeding as a Management Consultant as well as other books available within Strategy Control Room Advanced/SCRA (more details on this membership can be found in featured box above).

At a senior level, where you are in a position to make these changes across a practice or large team, we focus on the critical moves you can make to deliver outsize value sustainably.

That said, strategic thinking is based on many small, sequential and logical steps that we teach across all our programs on StrategyTraining.com (within Insider / Legacy) and in our books within SCRA. Mastering them will help you drive greater value for your clients.  

The team is loading this program and it will be released soon. If you are a consultant within an audit firm, structuring your entire business case and recommendations around this approach can set your firm apart. It allows you to demonstrate unique value in a way rival firms almost certainly could not replicate.

We also welcome your feedback (email us at team@firmsconsulting.com). Your experiences and feedback may shape future programs and follow up training episodes and resources. 

(Enroll in Insider or Legacy member at StrategyTraining.com (link below.)

Access Insider

Earlier we discussed a truly unique and significant program. One of the most exciting things we will be doing, based on strong demand from our members. There is nowhere else in the world you can see the step-by-step development of a major consulting practice built to the standards of the top firms. We are going to do it with you and you can see all the pieces and documents as they come together. This is part of our "Year of Consulting Sales" theme.

The Point-of-View (PoV) develops over five meetings. We will walk you through each meeting, prep for the meeting, follow up from the meeting, and plan after each meeting in a program on StrategyTraining.com with key documents loaded to SCRA.

We will start the release of the program and resources shortly. This email is a reminder to give you time to think through at least the first batch of questions.

Meeting One:
We are providing an update to the client on the performance improvement (operations strategy) program we have been running for about six months. (That entire strategy and logic of that engagement can be found in the Operations Management Strategy Journal in the Strategy Control Room Advanced membership/SCRA.) It's near the end of the engagement and we raise the issue of how the changes will be communicated to the markets/investment community. We were focusing on undertaking an investor relations strategy for the client. That is what we assumed could be the new work we should do for the client. (As an aside, we ended up doing that work much later.) The client, however, raises concerns that they are more worried about sharing with investors than crafting a communication strategy for them. It seems like a subtle difference, but it's significant.

Meeting Two:
The issue the client raised was not something where we had domain expertise in the strategy or operations practice. Yet, it was an area we understood from a different perspective. We had a unique lens on the problem. We decided to present a very different approach to the client. In effect, we wanted to radically slim them down. The idea is logical but not immediately obvious. From a strategy perspective, we knew it could be done, but at a practical level of going through all the steps, that was daunting.

We were also stepping into an extraordinarily political, emotional, and labor-controlled area. We would have to be very sensitive to the media issues. For this engagement, you will see how we went to some unusual outside experts to review our thinking and see if there was a better way to do what we were proposing.

Meeting Three:
This was a tougher meeting. The client was intrigued and he wanted to know how it could be done. How would it practically work? What helped us was not having done any work in this subject area before. Since we were not experts, we did not assume we knew best and did not apply best practices from the sector. That made the biggest difference here. Our problem statement surprised most people, including the experts, because we saw it as a business problem while the experts framed the problem around their understanding of the issues.

I cannot stress this enough: being strong in problem solving from first principles and not being the experts in the domain allowed us to come up with what seemed like a simpler solution. As the thinking develops, you will see this tug-of-war between the experts who want to push the engagement and our team trying to keep things moving on what mattered. Scope creep could have been a huge issue if we had not managed it.

Meeting Four:
By the fourth meeting, we had fleshed out our conceptual thinking, and we had more or less the single slide that would be the proposal. We have decided to use no domain experts in this particular stage, but would consult with them as we progressed. As you will see, the final solution does not require much of their input.

We will explain the three parts, which became three different engagements.

Part 1: Optimize the problem. In other words, make the problem as small as we can make it.
Part 2: Take the problem away from the company and give it to someone else (highly theoretical, but high margin)
Part 3: Explain what the client did. Investor relations strategy.

Meeting Five:
In meeting five, we fell into the trap of scope creep. We assumed that since the problem was so complex and had been intractable for so long and to so many experts that we had to do more analysis. The good part is that when the engagement began, as we kept rethinking about the problem, we found a way to solve the issue by radically simplifying the work.

Coming back to Part 2, we are proposing something that had not been done, was theoretically possible but the rules, regulations, systems and processes where not in place, but if could be done, the client could break into a new market with a new business. As we will explain, we are in effect changing the clients' core business mission, which in effect changed how they would operate.

Things to note as you go through this year long effort to build your practice and sales pipeline

Read the first message on this program and think through the questions.

It's often hard to see this if you are an expert, but expertise is like a straight jacket. You can make some changes, but you often cannot see the scope for radical changes. 

The client is often going to lead you to some issue. You have to listen and help them understand the issue. We teach clients and members how to do this.

You can sell theoretical work to clients. Provided, you can clearly explain what is possible if this works and the risks. By definition, leading companies must be doing theoretical work to lay the foundations for sweeping moves to knockout competitors.

The solutions to complex problems are almost always simple.

We often get trapped into selling methodologies and processes. Usually, they distract us from focusing on the real problem.

The work should be exciting. It should be meaningful and fun. You can make the work anything you want it to be.

Three Options to Join + Add-On:

1. Subscribe to Insider - gain access to a vast video/audio library and materials within Insider (thousands of training episodes that will change the way you think) plus all the training episodes we will be releasing related to this program.

2. Subscribe to Legacy - everything within Insider plus more advanced programs plus be able to submit your question in writing and get an audio reply from us, which takes into account your particular situation.

3. Subscribe to the Strategy Control Room Advanced membership/SCRA - see the full studies, proposals, premium books, centers of excellence and more.

4. 1-on-1 results executive coaching results clinics (most effective and powerful, to be used in combination with 1/2+3 above) - Apply to team@firmsconsulting.com. Please submit your resume (in any format you have it available).

Add-on - Article + Book - Published Author program to help you write your article/book. 

We have just released Preparing for Disaster Management Proposal. It is accessible within the Strategy Control Room, Advanced Level.

***

The new SCRA release is an unusual proposal, but it's very timely, given all the fires and natural disasters around California and so on. It is a proposal that we helped the client put together. He works at a very large professional services firm, and they are doing projects for one of the large utilities operating across the United States. That utility has decided that they need a dedicated Disaster Response Center and the capability to be able to forecast disasters as and when they unfold rather than responding to them after the fact. 

The proposal talks about the entire approach of how the entire system will be put together: the infrastructure, the methodology, and the processes to be able to be more proactive when these things happen. Because what the utility is predicting is that these are not once-off events. They're always going to be happening, and they may be happening in other parts of the world as well.

So, they're building a kind of a pilot center for the Western Hemisphere, the Western region, as they call it, and this is the ability to predict disasters before they happen, be proactive in getting the system out there. But also, if a disaster happens that they couldn't stop, could they have a better response to it? And it's about building a major data center and an early warning forecasting system so that they can have more capabilities on the ground. 

The other big decision that this proposal looks at is how to bring firefighting capabilities under the control of the utility. Previously, all they would do was work on clearing brushes and removing trees and branches around the power lines, but they've made the decision to build their own firefighting capability, and that will be phase two of this project. 

The proposal is very relevant because many companies around the world are dealing with this, and it's something that will be very valuable to members. It's not just about this problem. It's how you plan and have a disaster management response to any type of major problem you're likely to experience.

HOW TO FIND PREPARING FOR DISASTER MANAGEMENT PROPOSAL:

1. Log in to The Strategy Control Room, Advanced Level, membership area.
2. See the "PROPOSALS" dropdown. 
3. Select "35 Preparing for Disaster Management"
4. Preparing for Disaster Management proposal consists of 81 slides.

If you are The Strategy Control Room, Advanced Level, member, here is the direct link to this particular update.

If you joined an Advanced Level of the Strategy Control Room today, you would find the most powerful strategy, problem-solving, consulting, and results-oriented leadership reading library in the world. The resources include:

• Michael's explanation slides for selected programs on StrategyTraining.com

• 13 full engagements

• Change Management Influence & Persuasion Center of Excellence 

• Detailed Business Case Methodology Center of Excellence 

• Encyclopedia of Strategy Analyses Center of Excellence 

• Corporate Training Center of Excellence

• One-Week Immersion: Consulting Onboarding / Consulting Mastery Center of Excellence

• 35 proposals

• Flipcharts

• Layout guides

• 17 strategy and problem-solving books which we do not make available anywhere else

• 2 brand new strategy and problem-solving books just released and not available anywhere else

• 11 book drafts never before available and not available anywhere else

• Case interview materials for Felix, Rafik, Samantha, and Sanjeev, case interview exhibits, case interview solutions

• The evolution of corporate strategy

• The business case toolkit

• Implementation and operation toolkit

• Corporate strategy toolkit

• Strategy maps

• And more 

Enroll as a Strategy Control Room Advanced Member

Strategy analyses are complicated. They are ambiguous and rarely present a definitive answer. We have to predict the future and tell a client where/how to operate in that predicted future. That is incredibly hard to do. It's unlike short-term trading, where traders can quickly adjust positions and minimize risk. Investors often move through trades in split seconds to minimize future volatility. Traders who work with commodities etc., usually have a buyer before they find a seller, thereby having strong certainty in the profit from a trade.

Investors who take long-term bets sometimes win, but often lose. Successful long-term investing is rare because it requires a qualified bet on an uncertain future, much like strategy. They have to take a qualified bet on the future. In that sense, long-term investing shares similarities with strategy work. For every George Soros, many more people made the wrong bets and were driven out of business.

Strategy is difficult for similar reasons but with even greater consequences. You are taking a bet on the future, and you must determine how to increase confidence in your predictions despite uncertainty. Since all data you could use is either from the present but often from the past, you have to extrapolate some version of the past while modifying your reasoning. 

Since strategy plays out in years, the predictions have to consider everything from shifting regulations, consumer behavior, competitor behavior, and the client's ability to fund the changes. More analyses and more detailed analyses do not remove the uncertainty. Unlike investors, who can exit a bad position, strategists often commit to decisions that are difficult or costly to reverse. Yet, CEOs and leaders have to act.

So, how do we do this? How do we make decisions under extreme uncertainty, with data that is always incomplete? How do you make high-stakes decisions when certainty is impossible? How do you convince peers and the board to act despite the unknowns?

This is why we are creating the Strategy Analyses Center of Excellence.

1. We will show you twelve complete studies (within the Strategy Control Room Advanced/SCRA)

2. These are the core twelve that will teach you about strategy.

3. Through Insider/Legacy videos, we will explain the...

   1. ...strategy and operational challenges faced by the client.

   2. ...process we used to frame challenges.

   3. ...engagement structure proposed.

   4. ...proposal process.

   5. ...core analyses.

   6. ...ambiguity in the recommendations.

   7. ...why/how the bets on the future were taken.

   8. ...how we minimized uncertainty around the future.

   9. ...why the data could never be conclusive.

   10. ...how the board/management/employees responded.

   11. ...what happened years after the recommendation.

Here are the principles we followed:

1. First-person narrative. We were there and giving you the behind-the-scenes playbook.

2. Focus on making decisions with little certainty.

3. Just enough analyses to answer a question.

4. Focus on the challenges leaders face.

And, of course, 1-on-1 coaching clients can get our direct personalized guidance in our weekend clinics given their particular career/engagement challenges or opportunities. We do a deep dive with each client at each results clinic.

Below are the studies we will cover. Again, these are the core engagements that taught us the foundational principles of strategy and analyses. We may adjust this list, but this is the plan for now.

Restructuring a Bank

How does one fix a loss-making bank which is struggling to raise equity capital as its risk exposure is growing?

Restructuring a Large Industrial Concern

How does a large industrial business that measures product cycles in decades leave its loss-making business as it is battling to gain regulatory and licensing approval to join the fastest-growing and most profitable segments of the market?

Expanding a Bank

How does a bank that has realized its balance sheet can never support its ambitions seek out alliances with other lenders when it has very little to offer?

Changing a Business Model

How does a large company realize and convince its entire board and leadership team that it is pursuing the wrong strategy and facing a catastrophic future unless it changes direction immediately?

Developing an R&D Strategy

Does a corporate R&D division develop cutting-edge technologies, license in what it needs, and/or try to grow its nascent technology consulting business while deciding to invest in costly next-gen technologies?

Developing a Financial Services Product

How does a bank define the parameters of a product, test its profitability, decide which parts of the product will be within its control, which parts will reside with partners, build the product, launch the product, and calculate the returns from the product?

IT / Digital Strategy Study

How does a company decide how much of the IT team controls IT, AI, digital, and process control, and how does it manage and govern the parts under its control to support an organization rolling out a new digital infrastructure, while managing legacy mainframe systems?

Portfolio Planning Strategy

How do you prove a technology is worth the investment when it is not the cheapest, is a new technology to the client/region, has not been proven to work internationally, and would require costly new infrastructure to bring it online?

Making the Case for Market Entry

Why would a company enter a new market in which it would take many years to realize a return, where it has no expertise and there are no synergies with the other profitable and fast-growing parts of the business?

Operations Strategy - A New Approach

How does one develop an all-encompassing operations strategy to guide the entire operations of a large diversified business that is considered the best performer in its sector, especially when the client believes there are only minor/isolated operations problems?

Pharmaceutical / Healthcare Strategy Study

How does one move clients from an entrenched view of trying to cut the cost of employee healthcare towards focusing on the returns from funding even more comprehensive and costly treatment for employees?

Innovative Ways to Fund Growth & Expansion

How does a highly leveraged client find ways to fund its growth when its primary asset is co-owned by a founding investor who is unwilling to change the terms of the original investment?

Three Options to Join + Add-On:

1. Subscribe to Insider - gain access to a vast video/audio library and materials we will be releasing related to this program.

2. Subscribe to Legacy - everything within Insider plus more advanced programs plus be able to submit your question in writing and get an audio reply from us which takes into account your particular situation.

3. Subscribe to SCRA - see the full studies, proposals, books, centers of excellence and more.

4. 1-on-1 results clinics (most effective and powerful) - Apply to team@firmsconsulting.com. Please submit your resume (in any format you have it available).

Add-on - Article + Book - Published Author program to help you write your article/book. If you are in the executive coaching EB1A program, we will also guide you through your articles writing/publishing process if we will jointly determine that articles publishing should be used as part of your program to help you qualify for EB1A.

Let's build a consulting practice, together.

Along with several significant and ongoing updates to Coaching, Insider, Legacy & the Strategy Control Room Advanced, we have a year-long series of programs that outlines the steps to build a consulting practice/business. From the early idea to a functioning practice and lots of sales strategies, we are going to take you along on that journey.

You can watch what we are doing, follow our guidelines, and assess yourself against the best-practice examples we will show you. The files will be loaded in the SCRA and the videos will be available to Insiders & Legacy members.

We want to start this in February/March so you have the entire year to follow our guidance, build your practice alongside us, and set yourself up for the first three months of the year after. Building a strong practice should be done slowly, sequentially, and with a strong foundation. Flash-in-the-pan sales, without a sustainable base, often do not lead to growth. We will show you each step as we build things out.

1-on-1 coaching clients can receive our focused personal guidance in our weekend clinics. To get the most from this year-long program, it helps to have done the prep work before we begin in February/March. 

Here are the different parts of the program.

Module 1: Point-of-View

Consultants must have a PoV. This differentiates you from all other consultants and is what clients buy. They buy your PoV and agree to implement it within their organizations. A PoV is your idea about how something works or does not work. Kris and I are going to use a single-threaded approach. Over the year, we will show you how to develop a POV, why it should be simple, and how to explain the PoV. Your PoV must be simple. Simple does not mean it is not valuable.

We will follow that one PoV as it leads to a proposal, into a study, an article, a book, a sale, and more sales. So, you can see how a single PoV evolves into a practice. We have not used this approach before in our sales training and it is complementary to The Consulting Sales Rainmaker Process, but it is a different process.

Prep:

Explain your PoV in about 5 minutes orally.
Write your PoV and edit it to cover about half an A4 page.
Is this PoV valuable to clients?
Is it your PoV because you are an expert here or because it helps clients?
What are the limitations of your PoV?
How have clients responded to it?
Why do you believe it is not working with clients?
What is the equivalent PoV at your three main rivals?
Does the PoV organically lead to upsell/spin-off work?
What assumptions are you making about why this PoV will be successful with clients?
Why make these assumptions?
Why do you believe these assumptions to be true?
What would need to happen for them to be true?

Programs within Insider/Legacy to review before we begin:

Re-Building a Consulting Practice
Partnership. Memoir
How to Build a Consulting Firm
How to Sell Like a Partner, While Facing Discrimination
How to Solve Big Problems
Competitive Strategy
Advanced Competitive Strategy

Resources within the Strategy Control Room Advanced (SCRA) to review before we begin:

One Week Immersion: Consulting Mastery Center of Excellence (1,078 SLIDES)
The Professional Sales Journal_draft (242 PAGES) (Update Coming)
Competitive Strategy Journal_draft (123 PAGES)
The Strategy Visioning Workshop Journal (214 pages)
Encyclopedia of Strategy Analyses Tools Center of Excellence (264 SLIDES)
Detailed Business Case Methodology Center of Excellence (709 SLIDES)

Module 2: Proposal

Once we have the PoV, we will show you how to convert the PoV into an engagement structure to generate the benefits from the PoV. Always remember that a PoV is just an idea/theory until it is tested on a consulting assignment. We will focus on the critical elements of the proposal, including work streams, staffing, pricing, and margins. Selling a PoV is the easier part. Structuring an engagement to deliver the proposed benefits is much tougher. In many cases, the engagement team is not skilled at the analyses required to find the anticipated benefits. This is a primary reason engagements fail. The PoV may be correct, but the team cannot unlock its value at a client. 

Prep:

Has this PoV ever led to a sale?
If not, why do you believe it did not lead to a sale?
What is the most successful proposal for this PoV?
Why do you consider it successful?
Have you been able to replicate the success?
How are you measuring success?
What are your strategic intentions with sales/this PoV?
Do you find sales for this PoV to be difficult and tiresome?
Why is this?
What assumptions are you making when determining whether the proposal is ready for the client?
Have the proposed benefits from a PoV ever been realized by a client? Why?
If not, why do you still believe the PoV has value to clients?

Module 3: Engagement Structure

Now, we have to design the sequence of steps and activities that must be done to complete the engagement. This is the engagement structure and contains the project logic, workstream charters, and activity plans for the major workstreams. The goal is to keep things simple. Simple studies can deliver astonishing insights and value to clients. Most engagements fail at this stage. The engagement structure is generic and the guidelines are generic which eats up billable hours since everything is tested and no one knows what is the hypothesized answer. Therefore, they do not know when to stop the analyses. Streams are built around hypotheses.

Prep:

What are your answer-first hypotheses driving this study?
How does the engagement structure focus on these initial hypotheses?
What assumptions did you make when developing the engagement structure?
What role did you intend to play, and what role did you end up playing?
Did you have an explicit goal to grow as a professional through the engagement?
What are those goals, and did you achieve them?
Did you assume that the act of completing the engagement alone would lead to your growth?
Have you explicitly built in a buffer/actions to grow the practice while delivering this engagement? What are they?
Where have you staffed the most insightful team member and best leader in the engagement?
Is the entire team trained in the same operating standards?

Module 4: Engagement

In this phase, we plan to concurrently release the full engagement that was completed as a result of the POV, proposal, and engagement structure we developed earlier. You will see the entire study and all of the analyses. This is what we classify as one of the core studies. Mastering the approach will teach you foundational skills in strategic thinking. The earliest full studies done for a POV are important since they become guides for other similar studies you will do. They help train new team members. They are the cornerstones of the practice. So, we often tend to over-deliver when documenting the initial studies. That said, documenting and documentation is critical to any professional services firm. Poor knowledge management is a lead indicator of a declining professional services firm.

Prep:

What percentage of your time in a week is required to work within your engagement teams to complete the engagement from the/a PoV?
Why did you pick this percentage?
Are you intentionally involved in the delivery of the engagement?
Is your engagement structure the ideal structure?
What would the engagement structure look like under ideal conditions?
Do you think you are working in the practice or on the practice?
Do you find there are conflicting demands from the firm as you grow your practice through this engagement?
How are you managing those conflicting demands?
What is your strategy for documenting the engagement analyses, best practices, methodologies, etc?
How will you explicitly use this knowledge?
Are there any instances where you will not share this knowledge within the firm?
How will this knowledge be used to improve the engagement teams' and their work?

Module 5: Writing Your Article

Potential clients must understand what you do. The best way to do this is to write an article. In this phase, we will show you how to write an article as part of the deliverable of the engagement. So, the article is not a distraction to the engagement, but it becomes the primary tool to guide the teams and update the client. The article will become the final deliverable to the client versus a set of slides. Though you can have both if needed, you will find the article is more powerful and is more likely to get the client to act. Articles tell a story that PowerPoint often fails to capture.

You will see the article we wrote for the engagement from the POV. And we will guide you on how to do this. We also have the Published Author Program where we can write the article with you or for you since consulting articles have an accessible yet technical style that is not found In general writing.

Prep:

Do you understand the strategic significance between the following three options; 1 - Writing an article unrelated to an active engagement, 2 - Writing an article after an engagement, and 3 - Writing an article as an output of an engagement?
What is/was your strategy from the options above?
Why?
When will you begin the article?
How will you structure the article?
What writing style will you use? Why?
How will the article be checked and circulated?
Will draft versions be shared? And to whom?
How have you built in the article writing to be an asset and not a distraction?
When, where, and how will you specifically use the article (please be as detailed as possible)?
What will you do to get the maximum return from the article?
How have you defined returns?

Module 6: Developing a methodology/book

Here we are going to do something that takes you to the next level. And we truly mean a level above most professionals. Once you solve a problem that can be useful to many clients, it is strongly encouraged to write out the methodology of what you did so your teams can use this approach as a guide. Yet, if you will do all this work to update the methodology from an engagement, why not convert it to a published book? This elevates your standing and places you far ahead of your peers.

So you will, by this point, have seen us develop a POV, convert that into a proposal, design the engagement, deliver the engagement, write an article, and now develop a book from all the work done thus far. All off a POV and without distracting you from your work. All of this supports your work and ongoing sales.

You are welcome to prepare the book yourself or you/your firm can use ourPublished Author Programto prepare (or even publish) the book with our help. Consulting books tend to be more complex, and this is something we specialize in. 

Prep:

What is the explicit value to you, your team, your firm, and your clients from converting the study methodology into a book?
Break down AND expand the benefits to you even further.
Write down how the book (and article) saves your time, saves money, improves your branding, improves your visibility, increases the size of your sales pipeline, expands your connections to clients, and allows you to market yourself 24 hours.
Repeat the question by adding in the non-financial and non-quantifiable benefits.
Are the benefits clear to you?
Are you able to explain the benefits?
What is your critical path to preparing the book?
How can some of the work to prepare the book be done within the engagement?
What are your plans to publish and distribute the book?
Will you do all of this yourself, use professional help, or a combination thereof?
What is your timeline to publish the book?
What is your critical path?

Module 7: The next sale

It is often the case that clients do not want large and wide-ranging projects. In this phase, we will show you how to adapt the largeer study into a smaller study that is more easily sold to a client. So, now you have two assets:

A - The larger detailed methodology.

B - A smaller piece to get into the client to develop the business case for the larger program.

Prep:

From the original PoV, what smaller concepts within/aligned to the PoV can be taken to clients to quickly demonstrate the value of the overall PoV/your practice?
What is the benefits case to the client of the smaller concept/s?
There are six primary benefits cases. Have you looked at them all?
What is your strategy AND plan to take this to your most promising potential client?
Why can these smaller concepts not be taken to an existing client?
What is the burn radius of the PoV and/or smaller concepts? (How replicable is the work at the same client in the same year)
How will you use the smaller concept engagement to gain a larger engagement?

Module 8: The Professional Sales Journal

In this phase, we will give you access to updated The Professional Sales Journal (which will be available within the SCRA and discussed within Insider and Legacy membership). This is a Journal we use with consulting teams to help them understand the conversations they need to have to build their sales. We will show you how to use the journal, specifically the conversations that should be held. Kris and Michael will release guides around the conversations within Insider/Legacy membership.

At the end of the program, you will have finished the only complete consulting sales practice building program to scale into major clients. 

Prep:

What is your sales bench strength? (how many people on your team bring in sales)
Why is this your chosen/accepted bench strength? 
What is your delivery bench strength? (how many people on your team can lead an engagement in your absence)
Why is this your chosen/accepted bench strength? 
What is your insights bench strength? (how many people on your team can generate valuable insights that lead to additional revenue for your practice)
Why is this your chosen/accepted bench strength? 
Do you train people to sell or do you hope it catches naturally?
Are you defensive of your clients, from the rest of your firm, AND your team?
Why is this?

Three Options to Join + Add-On

1. Subscribe to Insider - gain access to video/audio materials related to this program.

2. Subscribe to Legacy - everything within Insider plus submit your question and get an audio input from us tailored to your situation.

3. Work with us via personal results clinics - 1-year executive coaching program where we work with you personally to help you build out your practice (email team@firmsconsulting.com to apply).

Add-on - Team access - Want to build out associated digital assets for your business? Use our nontechiesleague.com service, where our team will help you build out digital assets.

Add-on - Article + Book - Published Author program to help you write your article/book.

We have just released Executive Update 3 of the Corporate Strategy for Asset/Wealth Management Study in the Strategy Control Room, Advanced Level.

The ENTIRE study is now released.

***

Every so often, we release a study that is so powerful, so fundamental, that if you take the time to read it multiple times and really understand what it was teaching and how it was teaching it, it will teach you a primary/core skill that will change your ability to operate as a seasoned professional with a deeply analytical mind.

This is one of those studies.

The study focuses on asset management within financial services, an area that is becoming increasingly important worldwide as income levels rise. In this study, we are going to analyze an asset manager that is growing at a slower rate than competitors in one of the most dynamic markets in the world. And because it is growing at a slower rate, it's ultimately losing market share.

In this study, we will present a way to analyze the distribution of a financial services product, which, with a few tweaks and changes, could be applied to the distribution of any financial services product, even though our primary focus here is on investment products for wealth management.

This is a study that we encourage everyone to read. Take the time to work through it. Think about how you could apply this thinking to your own sector, which may not be in financial services. It teaches a fundamental skill: how to analyze a market across all key elements, all the way from asset management to distribution and administration. Whether or not you are in financial services or asset management, you are in an industry that produces something that you distribute.

The study is particularly interesting because it takes a very complicated subject and analyzes it in a sophisticated yet simple way to draw out very important analyses. It uses highly sophisticated frameworks developed for the client, and it pulls it apart in a way we have not yet applied in other studies.

This is one of those anchor studies like our study on Competition, the LAB Study, the Power Sector study, and the Tech M&A study. These are anchor studies because they teach foundational skills that we want our clients to master.

In this study, we tackle something incredibly sophisticated in an area where many people tend to be a little bit afraid. While most people are afraid of math and finance, when you analyze finances within the financial services sector, people tend to get even more intimidated. However, this is a topic that has become more important globally as the middle class has risen in most countries and the number of millionaires has increased.

So, this is a foundational study that we will be referring to for years to come. It teaches something so fundamental that every member should work through it. It teaches a skill of how to analyze a complex sector in a way that is easy to follow, even if you do not have a background in the sector.

Corporate Strategy for Asset/Wealth Management consists of 3 executive updates. The ENTIRE study is now released.

HOW TO FIND THE CORPORATE STRATEGY FOR ASSET/WEALTH MANAGEMENT:

1. Log in to The Strategy Control Room, Advanced Level, membership area.
2. See the "FULL ENGAGEMENTS" dropdown. 
3. Select "Corporate Strategy for Asset/Wealth Management."
4. The Corporate Strategy for Asset/Wealth Management consists of 197 slides for Executive Update 1, 107 slides for Executive Update 2, and 73 slides for Executive Update 3.

If you are The Strategy Control Room, Advanced Level, member, here is the direct link to these particular update.

If you joined an Advanced Level of the Strategy Control Room today, you would find the most powerful strategy, problem-solving, consulting, and results-oriented leadership reading library in the world. The resources include:

• Michael's explanation slides for selected programs on StrategyTraining.com

• 12 full engagements

• Change Management Influence & Persuasion Center of Excellence 

• Detailed Business Case Methodology Center of Excellence 

• Encyclopedia of Strategy Analyses Center of Excellence 

• Corporate Training Center of Excellence

• One-Week Immersion: Consulting Onboarding / Consulting Mastery Center of Excellence

• 31 proposals

• Flipcharts

• Layout guides

• 17 strategy and problem-solving books which we do not make available anywhere else

• 2 brand new strategy and problem-solving books just released and not available anywhere else

• 11 book drafts never before available and not available anywhere else

• Case interview materials for Felix, Rafik, Samantha, and Sanjeev, case interview exhibits, case interview solutions

• The evolution of corporate strategy

• The business case toolkit

• Implementation and operation toolkit

• Corporate strategy toolkit

• Strategy maps

• And more 

Enroll as a Strategy Control Room Advanced (SCRA) Member

And if you are not yet an Insider or Legacy member and want to gain access to video and audio advanced programs on StrategyTraining.com we invite you to explore membership options (scroll down). We recommend starting with Insider or Legacy membership as a base membership and adding the Strategy Control Room (Advanced Level) as an add-on when the time is right for you.

Take this opportunity to invest in yourself and your future. StrategyTraining.com resources can be transformative for your career, yet it's up to you to make time to study the resources and focus on quick integration. If you have any questions or need further assistance, please don't hesitate to reach out to us at team@firmsconsulting.com.

One Uncomfortable Truth: 

You’ve Been Thinking About Strategy All Wrong.

"The greatest mistake executives make is assuming they are in a competitive game. The best companies don’t compete. They change the game entirely." 

We have just released five new episodes of The Bill Matassoni Show, Season 3 and they challenge some of the most fundamental assumptions about business, marketing, and strategy.

Bill spent decades shaping the brands of McKinsey and BCG. Not by refining their marketing, but by redefining their position in the market. In these episodes, he dissects what truly drives influence, market power, and sustainable growth.

What’s inside:

• Market-making vs. competing – The firms and leaders who dominate industries are not the ones playing the game better. They are the ones who create new spaces where competition becomes irrelevant.

• How to sell the intangible – Whether it is consulting, financial services, AI, or high-end luxury, most leaders struggle to articulate the real value of what they offer. Bill explains how to sell trust, exclusivity, and access, not just products.

• The McKinsey advantage – Most assume McKinsey’s success is built on expertise. Bill breaks down how they control market perception and how this applies to any business.

• The strategy no one talks about – Growth is often framed as market share gains, but Bill argues that expanding the definition of your market is the more effective, and overlooked, approach.

• The power of narrative – Decisions are rarely rational. The firms that win know how to control the story that executives, investors, and markets believe.

These are the real strategic moves used by the most dominant firms.

For Insiders and Legacy members, the episodes are now available to watch.

For non-members, this is the kind of thinking that changes careers and companies. Join to access the full series (and the prior 2 seasons of this program).

[Watch Now] | [Join StrategyTraining.com]

Most leaders will keep thinking about strategy the way they always have.
Those who watch these episodes will not.

In this latest season, Bill Matassoni goes beyond theory, delivering an unparalleled deep dive into the principles that have defined his career and reshaped industries.

He begins with a day of intensive introspection, distilling the essence of his most profound insights. Then, in a rare and candid series of discussions, Bill brings together his closest colleagues and confidants, leaders who have shaped strategy at the highest levels, to unpack the strategies that redefine markets and create enduring competitive advantage.

Bill’s approach is about fundamental repositioning. Drawing on decades of experience, from tackling some of the most complex healthcare compliance challenges to revolutionizing how the world’s top consulting firms market themselves, he reveals how market leaders create dominance, not by competing, but by reshaping the playing field entirely.

This season is designed for business leaders who are ready to challenge conventional wisdom and rethink their approach to value creation, growth, and strategic positioning.

We invite you to engage with this extraordinary season, one that pushes the boundaries of what strategy and marketing can achieve.

It is time to reframe how you see the world and how the world sees you.

Join us as Bill and his closest advisors share insights that will change the way you lead.

The Bill Matassoni Show Season 3 (Insiders & Legacy Members)

Reimagine Your Career, Before It’s Too Late

What if your goal is completely wrong?

If you achieved your goal tomorrow, would your life be significantly better? Or just… slightly more tolerable?

Most people don’t have a career strategy. They have a survival plan. They work hard because that’s what they were taught. But have they ever stopped to ask if the end result is actually worth it?

You’ve done everything right. The best schools. The right job. The long hours. The sacrifices.

And yet, here you are. Wondering if this is it.

Most people don’t realize they’re on a treadmill until it’s too late. They spend their best years chasing a goal that was never truly theirs, following a path that guarantees struggle, stress, and, at best, a life that feels… just okay.

But what if your goal, the thing you’ve built your entire career around, is almost certainly wrong?

[The Stakes]

Look around.

Brilliant, hardworking executives are stuck in careers they don’t love, trapped by the weight of expectations, financial burdens, and obligations they never fully questioned. They work for money because they have to, not because they want to.

They’re deep into a strategy they never designed, chasing a version of success that, in the end, costs them everything: time, freedom, and fulfillment.

"Obligations may be the highest interest rate you will ever pay in your life."

We don’t talk enough about the cost of success. Not just financial, but emotional. The sacrifices you make in high school, university, and early career are not just your sacrifices. Your family, your time, your freedom, they all get entangled in a system that demands everything from you.

And for what?

A job that pays well but feels like a life sentence?

And here’s the worst part: they followed all the “right” advice.

They took the same steps as everyone else. Worked harder than most. And still, something feels off.

[Why It’s So Hard]

The system is designed to keep you moving forward without ever asking:

Is this the right path, or just the common one?

Am I optimizing for success or for struggle?

Is this even the right definition of winning?

"Everyone is following the same critical path, but it leads to the same struggles."

Executives and high achievers take pride in outworking everyone else, but what if effort alone isn't the answer? If you're following a broken model, working harder won’t fix it. You need to rethink the game itself.

Most people never ask these questions until they’ve already locked themselves into a career they no longer enjoy, tied themselves to financial obligations they can’t escape, and built a life they now have to sustain, whether they want to or not.

But there is another way.

[The Solution Exists]

"I re-engineered one step in the process, and it changed everything."

Most people assume their choices are limited, but what if one decision could change the entire trajectory of your career? What if you re-engineered a single step in your path? The difference between stress and freedom could be just one move away.

In our brand-new 1-Year Leadership Training program available to Insiders and Legacy members, we break down how high-achievers unknowingly trap themselves, and more importantly, how to rewrite the rules.

We’re not talking about motivational fluff. No vague “find your purpose”.

This is about strategy. A different way of thinking. A re-engineered path that changes everything.

For the first time, we’re opening up this program to our Insider and Legacy members, and if you’re serious about rethinking your trajectory, you need to be a part of this program from the start.

"The right goal is often the wrong goal if you don’t know how to achieve it differently."

Most professionals don’t lack ambition. They lack the right strategy. The reason most executives feel stuck isn’t because they aren’t trying hard enough. It’s because they’ve never seen an alternative approach that actually works. This program changes that.

But be warned: this may challenge some critical things you believe about success. 

Join us.

Enroll Now and Access the Program (select Insider or Legacy)

---

If you're an Insider or Legacy member, this program is now available in your account on StrategyTraining.com.

Not a member yet? Enroll here: www.strategytraining.com (scroll to membership options).

We care about your success and are here to support you. Feel free to reach out with questions at team@firmsconsulting.com.

Thank you for being part of the StrategyTraining community.

Access the First 2 Episodes of The Annual (Insider & Legacy Members)

Ten Lessons from Creative Destruction

Hope your weekend is going well. Many of you know that I also run StrategyTraining.com, which, to my knowledge, the largest and most powerful strategy, problem-solving, critical thinking, case interviews, consulting practice building, and leadership video training platform worldwide. I work with very talented colleagues, and one of my colleagues was also impacted by fire and shared what he learned from the experience. I will include the letter he sent to the Strategy Insights community below so you can also benefit from these lessons. Below is an email he sent.

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The California wildfires were a traumatic and shocking event. Though they tried, the media could never quite capture living through it. Many events stand out, but three will forever be etched in my memory. 

First, a neighbor stayed overnight and recorded the unfolding events over the first 24 hours. From the first reports of the brushfire to the now raging fire slowly coming over the hills, the embers flying at 100 mph, burning palm trees, and the eerie calm the next morning. Yet, it was not a true calm. In slow motion, he captures early morning footage of him tracking a fire burning closer and closer to his house, as he frantically runs around looking for the firemen. He wanted to clean out his neighbor's brush to prevent the fire from jumping from house to house. He seemed to succeed...until his house started to smoke and burn down in front of him. The look on his face cannot be described. I know every family in every home he shot; their kids, wives, and pets.

Second, my landscaper captured footage of those fleeing the fire as it engulfed cars, palm trees along the road, and a huge fireball jumping over a sports car with its top down. Then he zooms onto a mother I know getting out of her car and dragging her four-year-old child who is crying, screaming, and barefoot in one hand while pulling the leashed dog with her other hand.

Third, less than forty-eight hours after the fires, I found a way to drive back to my home. I was one of the first people to go back to that neighborhood. It was smoky and quiet. It looked like the war zones you see on CNN. That is when people still watched CNN. Homes were still burning when I returned. A few people were walking around. It exactly, and I mean perfectly resembled a Hollywood dystopian post-apocalyptic movie. 

From a young age, I knew that bad things happen, there will be little to no support, it's life and you need to advance. When I was in high school and most children were preparing for their exams, I co-led the student efforts of a social movement to topple a dictatorship. I spent little time in class and most of my time managing civil disobedience campaigns. Having spent most of my school years reading Time Magazine and The Economist, to me, fighting for what was right was normal. Not a single member of my family, community, etc supported me. They felt that fighting to gain equal rights was dangerous. If we failed, we would lose the very few rights we had. 

I was in Thailand after the devastating tsunami. I focused on helping people I knew move forward and find opportunities to grow and advance their economy. I saw the opportunity from the devastation. Though it's for another post, I once drove from the southern devastation to the north near the border with Laos to secure the rights for a group of bulls to serve as collateral to pay for a new home in the south.

I was in Chile during the devastating 2010 earthquake. I helped the guests in my hotel coordinate their evacuation and was one of the last people to leave the hotel. My harrowing trip over the Andes from Chile to Argentina is for a different post. Between being detained at the Chilean-Argentinian border for not willing to pay a bribe and the horror of traveling in a packed bus on unpaved mountain roads with no lights and 1,000-meter drops, it was not for the faint of heart. I did it and I was back to work within 24 hours.

In my first attempted carjacking, I returned to work the same day despite being held at gunpoint. I was back in my office and working within two hours. I have many stories like this. I was also, what it felt like, the lone foreigner in the middle of one of the deadliest riots in Asia. Everyone had evacuated and I was in the middle of the street with the rival factions advancing towards me on either side. 

I have been very fortunate to have grown up in a world where I simultaneously had very little support and faced trying circumstances from a young age. I am thankful for that. I am grateful to the many people who did not help me, did not support me, and did not reach out to me. I am not being facetious. Without them, I would not be equipped to deal with things like this. I would not be the person I am today. That's the first lesson. A tough life is a privilege if you give it the meaning of it having prepared you to lead in all circumstances.

The second lesson is to avoid excessive planning. I discuss this in detail during our new Insider program, "The Annual". You can plan as much as you want. Yet, I can assure you that society, your family (especially your inlaws), and Mother Nature throw you curve balls. You have to be like Neo in The Matrix to bend around them, but, and this is the key part, study each curveball and pick out the one that can be reinvented to be a great opportunity for you. I also discuss this in "The Annual". For example, when I was preparing for university, my family did not support me, and refused to pay for me, and I did not want an academic scholarship since those scholarships never covered all costs. That became one of the best things that ever happened to me. That curve ball, which I selected from all the curve balls flying around me, led to me reinventing my life.

The third lesson is counterintuitive. When friends were in tears and breaking down during the fires, all I could do was look at them and admire that they were so fortunate in life that they could break down. It truly is a great privilege to be in so much pain that you cannot even work. They could take a posture of being vulnerable and letting down their defenses. They knew they had people in their lives who would step in to protect them and their families when their defenses were down. They are Simba's of the world, from The Lion King. Simba was willing to take risks and go on adventures because Mufasa loved him so much that Simba knew he was protected. When Simba was hiding from Wildebeests, he knew Mufasa would come for him. He did not know how, but he was raised with this belief. In life, there are the protected and the protectors. The protected have the unique gift of having the opportunity to grieve, heal, and rebuild on their terms because they have a protector. For the protectors, we must be the cavalry for whom we are waiting. Reinforcements are not coming. 

Who stands by you? That is the fourth lesson. Life is easy when it is easy. Life is nice when it is nice. I watch many reality shows and in the few dating shows I watch, contestants almost always want someone educated, well-off, good-looking, adventurous, generous, funny, etc. Anyone can buy you nice gifts, be happy, be nice, and be a fun person when life is nice. Yet, life is never nice all of the time, let alone most of the time. The most important thing in life is to be present. Be there. Be there all the time. You don't have to be the best father. You need to be in your child's life and be a father. The people who stand by you are serious. They help you by being there. They have committed and are committing each day they stand by you. That is a daily renewal of vows, for couples, versus a once-off staged renewal of vows on the beach.

I was surprised about the deductible discussions by my neighbors. That is the fifth lesson. Essentially it went like this. "I was shocked to learn my insurer would only forward me any money after I had incurred $500,000 of damages. That is my deductible and is it fair?" This was common. If you dig in closer you realize in most, though not all cases, the husband was managing the finances. During the fire, the husband focused on work to generate income and handed the insurance claims process to their unprepared wives. This is unfair and is a bad strategy. The best person to handle a critical issue should manage it, albeit by pulling in help from the family as needed. Managing the claims for multi-million dollar homes is not a small issue. For critical life-changing tasks, the best person must lead and it should be the person who has always been managing the task.

During crises, we often adopt a survival mindset and hope and pray for something good to happen. We take something or anything versus what we paid for. We often are the victims of bad actors, or good actors who take advantage of the situation to become a bad actor. This is the sixth lesson. Most of us have the primary aim of surviving a crisis. We think it is better to get 60% of a contract we signed, versus nothing. We become defensive and fight off scams. I follow a strategy of deterrence. This is different. When bad things happen I quickly and calmly signal to those involved that there will be significant immediate reactionary consequences in trying to take advantage of us, my family, my team, and my colleagues. I calmly spell out the consequences in clear terms and explain the first steps I will take. Being in the middle of a crisis is bad enough. Dealing with opportunistic and strategic scam artists is overwhelming. See them off before they begin.

I have a friend who has a home in the hurricane capital of the world. He complains about the need to evacuate at least two times a year due to hurricanes. It's hard to sympathize with someone who knowingly and willingly built a home in the hurricane capital of the world and is sad that Mother Nature does not support his retirement plans. Mother Nature can be a caregiver but she can also be a hell-raiser. She can be a force of creative destruction. She breaks things to make it better. This is the seventh lesson. If you live in a place with a history of snow storms, expect to wear Canada Goose. If you choose to live in a place with a history of hurricanes, do not be surprised by them. If your spouse was unfaithful to all their previous partners, well...

Don't follow the wisdom of the crowds. This is lesson eight. Crowds are not wise. They may agree. They may agree vigorously. They may be large and loud. Yet, they are not wise. Doing what the majority is doing often will not lead to the best outcome. Every single great investor was a contrarian. Business strategy is about being a contrarian. Corporate strategy is about being a contrarian. It's about pursuing a contrarian idea that is true OVER time. The nasty bit is sticking to your contrarian plan over what may be a long time. The money you invest in your 401(k) and Roth IRA is an investment. So is the money you invest in yourself, your family, and your home. When you follow the crowd in a crisis you will get the returns of the crowd, which are often losses. As humans, we want, in a crisis, to do anything to show we are doing something and we want comfort in what we do. And we gain comfort from following a crowd, even if the crowd is uninformed and wasting their money. I have never done what the crowd did. It usually works out far better than I expected.

Lesson nine is that people gamble. And they do it in astonishing ways. Not willing to fully insure your home for its full value is a remarkable gamble. So many people did this. That is bold confidence, recklessness, or uninformed optimism. Are they not all the same thing? Mother Nature is not going to give you any special treatment. She is a great mother who treats all her children with the same level of destruction. If you read about most great business successes, and if you look into it carefully, there is a gamble that someone took. We then laud these people and try to replicate their strategy. How do I replicate a gamble? By its mere definition, it means I am doing something where I could lose everything. In life, you should be trying to reduce the number of gambles you take, unless you have such a high-risk tolerance that sleeping on a friend's couch and eating ramen noodles for years looks mighty appealing.

In military strategy, we want to see our opponents fight someone a few times before they fight us. We often secretly lead them into a conflict against someone else. We do this because we want to see how they fight others, how they could fight us, their relative strengths, and their relative weaknesses. And if we are lucky, their armies are destroyed before they fight us. This is the tenth lesson. Watch what happens in a crisis. Any crisis. It is a rare and important opporunity. Study everything. It provides a blueprint for what you can expect/do later in your life. If not a single friend/colleague/family helped, then you know what to expect/do in the next crisis. How did the emergency services respond? How long did it take you to run out of cash? Who helped you and who helped you first? Who made your life harder? What opportunities exist for you to advance? If you are not advancing, you are retreating.

This is the United States of America. Like the Mandalorians, we are a creed. A belief system. I chose that picture above because when America burns, our belief system stands through it all as our shining beacon. You cannot destroy a belief system.

The British burned Washington in 1814. We stormed back to become a superpower in a few decades.

The Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor hoping to send us a decisive message to stay out of the way. Being the poor listeners that we are, we stormed back to lead the Allied victory in WWII.

San Francisco was hit with a dual earthquake and fire in 1906. It gave birth to Silicon Valley.

LA was hit by one of the worst firestorms ever. It gave birth to... 

Creative destruction may be unpleasant. Yet, it happens.

Live long and prosper,

Michael

P.S. 2025 is shaping up to be a game-changing year. We’re rolling out a wave of new programs and resources across SCRA, Insider, Legacy, Coaching, AI, and more. If there’s something you’d love to see us cover or release, or Michael & Kris to cover in their weekly emails, let us know at team@firmsconsulting.com. We told you that big things are coming, and this is just the beginning.