In this job market, you may have to create your own career
By Peter Gray
It can be hard to find a job. In this job market, you may need to figure out how to create one for yourself.
Here’s how one person in Madison did that. Meet Kevin Price, the founder and chief investment officer of Interlake Capital Management. Kevin moved here three years ago, looking for a job in money management. When he didn’t find one, he launched Interlake.
Some people have a way of inventing their own opportunities. When Kevin graduated from the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Washington, he had the summer off before starting a job in the fall. He wanted to spend the summer playing golf and visiting friends around the country, but he was broke. So he and a friend hatched a plan: They decided to write a book about golfing their way across America. They contacted 40 courses, including some famous ones, asking to play there. Nearly all invited them. They drove cross-country, ate and slept wherever they could for free, and played some of America’s greatest golf courses as VIP guests.
Golfers will appreciate the Wisconsin leg of their trip: they played Lake Arrowhead in Wisconsin Rapids and Trapper’s Turn in Wisconsin Dells. Then in Kohler, they played the two Blackwolf Run courses and stayed overnight, on the house, at the American Club. The night before that in the Dells, they’d slept in their Honda Civic.
As two results of that summer, Kevin co-authored a book (“Fairways and Highways: In Search of the Perfect Drive” – you can look it up on Amazon) and he fell in love with Wisconsin. He returned here for graduate school, earning a PhD in political science at UW-Madison. A few years later, having opted out of academia to become an investment manager at Merrill Lynch in Seattle, he decided to move back here.
“I looked for a money management job in Madison and came up empty.” So Kevin incorporated Interlake. He then spent a few months getting registered with the state (“a non-trivial process” for an investment firm), designing two stock portfolios and attracting his first clients. As for startup funding, “I envisioned raising capital, but it just never happened. I was barking up a tree with nothing in it. I bootstrapped this thing myself. I staked nearly everything I have on this company.” He kept expenses to a shoestring. He has not hired any employees, but has revenue-sharing arrangements with sales and marketing consultants.
Kevin’s goal is to make Interlake a “better, less expensive, more transparent” investment firm for small investors, not just the rich. “I grew up a middle-class kid, and Interlake’s mission is to put those values to work for ordinary investors to help them achieve financial security.” That mission moved Kevin toward focusing Interlake on managing 401(k) retirement plans.
Interlake got a big break when it became Wisconsin’s only firm to gain the endorsement of Matthew Hutcheson, an independent pension fiduciary. Hutcheson is an influential figure in the retirement plan world – he is respected as a national authority and moral watchdog over the industry. Kevin found Hutcheson’s testimony to Congress about excessive hidden fees in retirement plans to be such a “revelation” that he wrote Hutcheson to thank him, and sent some information about Interlake. “He e-mailed me back pretty quickly. I’ll never forget his message, I can recite it almost verbatim. He said he’d received our materials; he’d spent a lot of time on our Web site; we were one of a handful of firms that really get it; and he wanted to talk with me as soon as possible.” Hutcheson’s support helped Interlake win several more 401(k) plans to manage.
Interlake is still a small, young firm. Now that it has managed some 401(k) plans for more than a year, Kevin is looking forward to having them rated by BrightScope, a retirement plan ratings service, because he is confident they will score well for their quality and low cost. “The future’s incredibly bright. I expect 2009 to be a great year for Interlake, which is good news for us, and for thousands of people who’ll have better, cheaper ways of saving for retirement.”
Not bad career progress for someone who couldn’t find a job in Madison.
