Mentor Me: GA=T+E—Ken Poirot Career Highlights and Reference Material
From the time it took to write, professionally edit, rewrite, design, and publish Mentor Me, some of the websites for reference materials I have in the book, have already been discontinued or the information was taken down. For this reason, I will provide some of the information on my career highlights, as well as reference material here, so it is readily available and accessible.
I moved to Houston, Texas after graduating from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York with a B.S. in Microbiology, to pursue my Ph.D. studies in Cancer Research through UT Health Science Center – MD Anderson Cancer Center.
The culmination of this time in research resulted in a US Patent for Lipid Complexed Topoisomerase I Inhibitors. The website I downloaded the patent from and referenced in Mentor Me, Patentstorm.com, is no longer in business, so I will provide another website where it can be accessed on Google Patents.
Since I have a copy of this patent in .pdf format, I have also provided a downloadable version of this patent below:
US Patent #5834012, Lipid Complexed Topoisomerase I Inhibitors
The value of any scientific research is often measured by if it is referenced and also how many times it is referenced in future works and papers by other researchers. I was pleased to see this patent has been referenced 15 times since the patent was granted. Here is a listing of those citations.
I was also one of the authors on a co-authored scientific paper titled, Lipid-Complexed Camptothecin: Formulation and Initial Biodistribution and Antitumor Activity Studies, published in Cancer Chemotherapy and Pharmacology, March 1996, Volume 37, Issue 6, pp 531-538.
To date there have been 30 citations of this paper since its publication – the citations can be seen here on Scopus’ website.
Financial Services Management Career Highlights
The biggest highlights of my career in financial services and management were during my time with Frost Bank, Cullen/Frost Bankers (NYSE: CFR). I had performed well as a Financial Advisor with American Express Financial Advisors, Inc.(parent company American Express, NYSE: AXP), The Charles Schwab Corporation (NYSE: SCHW) , and Merrill Lynch (now part of Bank of America, NYSE: BAC). Frost Bank is where I made my transition from Financial Advisor to manager.
As a new manager, I led my department, Frost Investment Services, the brokerage division of Frost Bank, to four consecutive years of double-digit revenue growth, increasing revenue by over 83% (less than $8.5 million in revenue to more than $15.6 million), while increasing the profit margin from approximately 27% to approximately 37%.
I say “approximately” because there was a discount brokerage portion of this division that did not report to me – the revenue growth stated is only including the production from our Financial Advisors/Investment Officers, but the overall profitability depended upon how we broke down total profitability of just the Financial Advisors without including discount brokerage. Depending on how we broke out discount brokerage’s numbers, this would change the profit margin slightly based upon how we calculated the profit margin +/- 1%.
In addition, during this same time period, the Financial Adivsors I coached raised their individual revenue production from less than $25,000 per month to over $41,000 a month.
A couple years into my new role as the Sales Manager/Senior Vice President for Frost Investment Services, the performance of our bank brokerage program was getting noticed from outside the organization. We were a member of the Bank Insurance Securities Association (BISA), and as such, we reported our numbers to this organization along with other bank brokerage programs.
It was not long before I was being asked to speak and address groups of managers about our performance, explain what I was focusing on, as well as answer questions in a group setting to help other banks deliver similar performance.
It just so happens an American Banker reporter was present during one of these meetings, caught my presentation, and wrote about it. At the time I had led my brokerage department to two consecutive years of double-digit revenue growth while other bank brokerage departments were struggling mainly with negative growth.
I also obtained double-digit revenue growth as a regional Sales Manager for Guaranty Bank (now part of BBVA, NYSE: BBVA) and JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM).
Management and Understanding Personality Styles Training/Quiz
I can say there were many factors in orchestrating consistent double-digit revenue growth as a manager. Much of which I have put in Mentor Me. Goal setting by my Financial Advisors, like I walk through in Chapter I, Time Management – focusing on the “Big Rocks” (the most important tasks) and using a “High-Impact and Low-Impact Days” Strategy as I cover in Chapter II, Chapter VIII – where I focus on using constructive versus destructive criticism and putting it all together, as illustrated by various coaching/mentoring relationships I had with employees.
What I found was most important as a manager, is to remember what my three “Big Rocks” activities were – where my Time (T) and Energy (E) needed to be focused. Namely, on people, products, and partnerships. It is deliberate that people comes first in this list.
People are always the most important piece of the puzzle for any manager. Developing, encouraging, lifting up, keeping, recruiting, and hiring the best people is the most important aspect of any management position. Without your people, your role as a manager does not exist – this was my constant attitude and thought process. My people were much more important than me.
Having said that, I always wanted to add value to my people, so I made sure if I took them out of production for training (sparingly is best), the time would be of most value to them – both personally and professionally.
For this reason, I found the training on “Understanding Personality Styles” in Chapter III of Mentor Me to be of most value to my people at different institutions, for the least amount of training time. As I say in Mentor Me, it was the “bang for the buck” training.
The Personality Styles Quiz and statistics I originally referenced and used for Mentor Me is no longer listed on the internet where I once found it – so I have made the original .pdf version available below (I had modified this version for use in Mentor Me):
As a manager, if you can lift people up and inspire them to accomplish things they never thought were possible – that is the true mark of a great manager.
This should be every manager’s goal – to inspire people and lift them up!
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Warmly,
Ken Poirot
Financial Professional and Scientist of Life
