Building a Post-Retirement Career: How Expats Can Start Crafting Their Portfolios

Traditional retirement is evolving. For many senior executives, stepping away from corporate life is not about slowing down; it is about redefining purpose and supporting long-term financial growth. While many plan to “do some consulting,” few have a clear strategy for what their next chapter will look like. Transitioning from a high-performance career can be challenging, but a wide range of post-career opportunities, from mentoring and teaching to advisory work and portfolio careers, allows experienced leaders to apply their expertise in meaningful and flexible ways.

In this episode of Expat Wealth, Richard Taylor – dual UK/US citizen and Chartered Financial Planner – is joined by Naomi Kent – Founder and CEO of The Boardroom Company. They explore when and how professionals should begin preparing for retirement. The conversation covers what it takes to build a successful post-retirement career, from clarifying long-term goals to setting realistic expectations. Regardless of the path ahead, one principle is clear: retirement portfolios should be built intentionally throughout a career, not left as an afterthought, especially when managing international wealth and cross-border obligations.

Richard and Naomi discuss:

The impact of a polished post-retirement portfolio: Senior executives can build a well-rounded mix of activities, including paid board positions, advisory roles, fractional executive work, teaching, coaching, selective consulting, and personal pursuits such as travel, family, and health. This combination offers purpose and structure while enhancing their appeal to potential consultees.

The value of board work: Effective board members bring oversight, insight, and foresight, along with attributes such as curiosity, communication skills, and a manageable ego. Retirees don’t have to have been a CEO or even in the C-suite to be a strong director; niche expertise can be just as valuable.

The importance of networking and personal branding: Clear goals are essential for retirees targeting board roles. Defining the types of boards they aim to join, cultivating a board-ready personal brand, and developing a focused relationship strategy help candidates get off to the right start. Many opportunities already exist within established networks, and when board aspirations are clearly communicated and the right conversations are happening, new opportunities often emerge.

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Expat Wealth is supported by Plan First Wealth. Plan First Wealth is a Registered Investment Advisor serving fellow expatriates and immigrants living across the US on matters such as retirement planning, investment management, tax planning and non-US asset management.

https://planfirstwealth.com/

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Expat Wealth is affiliated with Plan First Wealth LLC, an SEC registered investment advisor. The views and opinions expressed in this program are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of Plan First Wealth.

Information presented is for educational purposes only and does not intend to make an offer or solicitation for the sale or purchase of any specific securities, investments, or investment strategies. Investments involve risk and unless otherwise stated, are not guaranteed. Be sure to first consult with a qualified financial adviser and/or tax professional before implementing any strategy discussed herein. Plan First Wealth does not provide any tax and/or legal advice and strongly recommends that listeners seek their own advice in these areas.

ABOUT RICHARD:

Richard Taylor is a British expat, dual citizen (UK & US). Originally from Bolton, he now lives in Greenwich, CT, where Plan First Wealth has its head office.

As the firm’s leader, Richard launched Taylor & Taylor, now Plan First Wealth, and continues to fuel the firm’s growth. Richard is a Chartered Financial Planner (UK – CII) in addition to holding the IMC (CFA UK) and Series 65 (US – FINRA).

Connect with Richard on LinkedIn

TRANSCRIPT:

Naomi Kent:

[00:00:00 – 00:01:09]

The UK and the US have a very different sort of setup, different types of companies. As you can imagine, many more companies in the United States. But one thing that is popping up and I think it’s, they’ve always been around, but even more so in the last couple of years are what’s called an advisory board. So on the low end you could be, it could be $50,000 a year. On the high end it could be 150, 300,000 a year. 300,000 on some of the public company boards, yes. And they have share plans, things like that as well. So they’re motivated to want the business to succeed. A client of mine got on a board about a year ago. It was a private company, PE backed 100 grand a year. But you know, he, there were some times when he had to do a little extra work, but he was, you know, retired from his executive role and he just loved working with them. He said he loved the team. And actually that’s one thing to add here, which is whenever I ask people, why did you enjoy working on that board? Why did you enjoy serving on that board? Every time it’s the people, it’s not the product, it’s not. They don’t really care. Like it could be anything.

 

Richard Taylor:

[00:01:09 – 00:01:11]

Doesn’t it always comes back to the people, doesn’t it?

 

Naomi Kent:

[00:01:11 – 00:01:12]

It really does.

 

Richard Taylor:

[00:01:12 – 00:03:00]

Imagine you’re the CEO of Pepsi or extreme example, but you’re a CEO of a scene of a. Of a big company who could actually just get the president pretty much on the line whenever they wanted. And then that was just. That just went overnight because you didn’t have the clout your position had. The cloud. Welcome to Expat Wealth, a Plan first wealth podcast dedicated to helping ambitious expatriates in America and Americans overseas thrive. I’m your host, Richard Taylor, and Plan first wealth is the business I founded and run today. And we work with successful expatriates, immigrants and internationally minded Americans to make the most of opportunity and avoid the expat landmines. First, a quick disclaimer. While Plan First Wealth LLC is an SEC registered Investment Advisor, the views and opinions expressed in this program are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views and positions of Plan First Wealth. Information presented is for educational purposes only. Now, if you aren’t already receiving our emails, please go to our website, planfirstwealth.com and sign up there. It’s free and you’ll be notified every time we drop a new episode and so much more. Okay, let’s get Back to this week’s show. Welcome back to another episode of Ask an Expert from Expat Wealth. Now, I’ve got something a little bit different for you this week. In a departure from our usual mildly disturbing Expat Tax content, I am delighted to be joined by Naomi Kent. Naomi is the founder and CEO of the Boardroom company, where she helps experienced executives get positions on company boards. And today we are going to discuss something absolutely central to what we do at Plan first wealth, which is the wealth management and financial planning company behind this podcast. And that is career options after retirement. Hi, Naomi. Welcome to Expat Wealth.

 

Naomi Kent:

[00:03:00 – 00:03:01]

Hi. Thank you, Richard. Thanks for having me.

 

Richard Taylor:

[00:03:02 – 00:03:04]

You’re very welcome. Welcome to New York. Welcome back to New York.

 

Naomi Kent:

[00:03:04 – 00:03:06]

I know, I know. I used to live here for quite

 

Richard Taylor:

[00:03:06 – 00:03:14]

a while, long time. So if you wouldn’t mind, that was my brief introduction. Will you just introduce yourself to everyone and explain what you do?

 

Naomi Kent:

[00:03:14 – 00:03:38]

Yeah, absolutely. So originally from the UK and came to the United States in 2006 with a British company. So I was transferred with them over to New York. Spent about 13 years in New York, then some time in Chicago, and now I do some time in Florida because I’ve had enough of winters, London winters, New York winters, and Chicago winters. I’m pretty much over with those.

 

Richard Taylor:

[00:03:39 – 00:03:44]

You mean the black snow and ice on the ground here is not tempting you?

 

Naomi Kent:

[00:03:44 – 00:04:44]

Back on the way in, I actually took a picture of it and sent it to someone. I said, this is New York City snow. It’s brown. You know, it goes brown. Yeah, but. But yeah. And so I. I’ve been working with boards of directors my entire career, so worked at a company called BoardX, where we analyzed the profiles and the relationships of board members. And then about eight years ago joined a company that was helping people through a career transition. So career transitions at a later date, though, in their careers. So sort of like the final kind of, what are you going to do after retirement? And so work with individuals on what’s called a portfolio career. Setting up a portfolio career which consists of serving on boards in many cases. So I work alongside those. And today I’ve just a few interesting facts from me, I actually did Ironman up in New York, so I actually trained in New York City for an Ironman.

 

Richard Taylor:

[00:04:45 – 00:04:46]

Full Ironman.

 

Naomi Kent:

[00:04:46 – 00:05:14]

Yeah, full Iron Man. I did one in France as well, but I did one upstate New York in Lake Placid, which, by the way, is one of the most beautiful places, places you must go visit if you haven’t. But so. So yes, I like endurance sports. But I’m getting a bit older now, so there’s a, I’m sort of slowing down a little bit. But, but I do believe in setting not just professional goals, but also personal goals. Right. As you go through your career and even if you’re retiring, you can still set personal health goals and, and all of the above.

 

Richard Taylor:

[00:05:15 – 00:06:59]

Well, respect on the iron man. That’s faintly terrifying. Right. So the reason I was so interested to have this conversation with you is we are the firm behind this Plan First Wealth. We are a cross border financial planning company. We were successful expatriates who tend to almost exclusively have been senior executives. You know, they worked for a company in the UK or elsewhere, got a tap on the shoulder, fancy coming, trying your hand in the US they take that opportunity and here we are. And a lot, you know, almost exclusively this podcast is based around like tax issues or retirement issues and pension planning. But what we do at Plan First Wealth, a huge part of it is, yes, the technical stuff, but there’s so much more to retirement. And one of the things we, I talk about is I don’t call retirement retirement. I actually, I call it what next? As in, I’m trying to note very few people now want to work for 40 years down tools and then never do a day’s work again. They want, they want to change gears, they want more flexibility, they want to work less hours, they want less stress, they want less direct responsibilities. But most people want to be engaged, they want to remain engaged and they want to use the experience and the skills they’ve Learned over those 40 years and put them to good use. People just don’t know how, what and how. So when we met and we had our first conversation, I thought, I’ve got to, I’ve got to bring that, I want to, I want to share this, I want to bring this to my, to my audience. So I mean, where do we start? What options are there for people, you know, senior, successful, exact, longtime executives who have just maybe, you know, they’ve made it, but they kind of had enough.

 

Naomi Kent:

[00:07:00 – 00:08:54]

It’s funny actually, there’s also another type of person who goes, I know, I, I just want to retire. I’m over this, I’m tired, I want to see my family, I want to go travel. And they do that for about, I’ve seen people do it from three weeks to three months to six months. And then they’re like, right, I’m really done with that and I need a schedule and I need to give back and I need to have purpose, but to Your point? I don’t want to go back to the big corporation. I’m really done with that. And I think it’s a difficult time for people because they lack purpose. I’ll give you an example. And somebody actually gave me this a few years back. He said, naomi, it’s changed. He said, I used to go to the golf course or the golf club and shake a few hands and talk about what I was doing. And I got nothing to say. What am I doing here? And there’s a sort of pride thing that’s there too. And it’s men, it’s women. It’s anyone who’s been in a corporate executive role who generally has had more meaningful conversations with people about what they’re doing and trends they’re seeing. And now suddenly it all goes away. The other thing that goes away as well is when you’re an executive and you’re making decisions in a company. You know, people want to be around you. They want to invite you to dinners, they want to invite you to conferences. You get these free tickets to go here, there and everywhere. People will take your call. And you as a person, you probably consider them contacts, relationships, friends. The minute you leave, a lot of that just falls away. The calls stop. People don’t invite you. You’re not the decision maker anymore. And so it’s really driven by not just people wanting to do more, but their whole life changes and sometimes not for the better. They prefer as it was.

 

Richard Taylor:

[00:08:54 – 00:09:14]

Was it you? Someone mentioned to me it might well have been you, but like, imagine you’re the CEO of Pepsi or extreme example, but you’re a CEO of a scene of a. Of a big company who could actually just get the president pretty much on the line whenever they wanted. And then that was just. That just went overnight. Because you didn’t have the clout. Your position had the clout.

 

Naomi Kent:

[00:09:14 – 00:10:09]

Correct. I can imagine that people don’t know that until they leave. So. So options, in terms of options, I. When I work with clients on a portfolio career kind of program, I actually have a long list. It’s like an assessment and a long list of things. And they’re sort of personal goals, personal things you want to achieve. So it could be travel, it could be spending more time with my grandchildren. It could be we want to upgrade our home or we want to move house. Right. That’s time and effort spent. And then there are professional goals, which can consist of being on boards and different types of boards. There’s also. So there’s portfolio career and there’s a Portfolio of boards. So you could have a not for profit, you could be on an industry association board, you could be on a small privately held kind of startup type, fast growing business and then you could be at a more established company. Right. So you could do all these things

 

Richard Taylor:

[00:10:09 – 00:10:12]

and get at the same time or is it the same time?

 

Naomi Kent:

[00:10:12 – 00:10:13]

Correct.

 

Richard Taylor:

[00:10:13 – 00:10:16]

So when you say portfolio career, what do you mean?

 

Naomi Kent:

[00:10:16 – 00:11:42]

So portfolio, think about like a diverse group, a diverse number of activities that you do. And so when we think about work, we think about, right, I’m going to have one job and I’m going to do that one job really well until I retire. What happens is at retirement because you’ve got access to technology, you’ve got access to, I mean you can really pretty much work from anywhere. You can do perhaps fractional work, which is where you work maybe one day a week for a company, maybe let’s say you’re a chief marketing officer and you’ve just retired in some company. I mean they could really use your help but they can’t afford you as their cmo. But instead they take you for one day, which is just about what they can afford. You deliver an amazing service to them for one day per week and things like that. There’s also, there’s also consulting that you can do. So project work. So again a company might come to you and say hey, we’re trying to launch this product and we need your marketing assistance, we need your financial help, we need whatever. And so you could come in, you know, it’s a consulting gig. So it’s essentially a fee, contractor fee. There’s teaching so you don’t have to have an advanced degree like a PhD if you do. Yes, it’d probably be easy fit but you can be an adjunct professor and have a master’s degree or even not. I have a client of mine, he didn’t even finish his degree and he

 

Richard Taylor:

[00:11:42 – 00:11:59]

teaches my kids school, my kids in first grade at a French school and his teachers are parents of bum parents are kids who have now graduated from that school and they’ve just, they weren’t teachers. They’ve gone back just to teach these first grade kids for the love of it.

 

Naomi Kent:

[00:11:59 – 00:12:25]

That’s right. Cause they enjoy it. So you could do that, you could do coaching. So you could coach other. Let’s say if you’ve been a CEO and you’re not interested in being a CEO again, but you want to give back, you could mentor and coach other CEOs you could even do. I had a client who wanted to learn the guitar it was, you know, hey, I want to just learn something new. Or they, they knew how to do it, but they didn’t know.

 

Richard Taylor:

[00:12:25 – 00:12:32]

Do you help with all of this or is it, are you just like, these are all the options and I can help you get on board or could you help with the, the gamut?

 

Naomi Kent:

[00:12:32 – 00:13:04]

Well, I focus the. I would say the board piece is not just about, hey, let’s set some goals and go after it. There, there’s a process involved which I’ll go through in a second. But with all the other things, it’s important to have a plan, right? So if you, it’s like any coaching, right? So let’s say you said I do want to go back and start playing the guitar again or traveling more. So then we’d start to say, okay, well what does that entail? What’s the first step? And I would, you know, encourage them to take that first step and go and get lessons or something.

 

Richard Taylor:

[00:13:04 – 00:13:34]

It’s more than just that. Your, your, your, your core offering or your kind of the core message I guess is centered around boards, but really it’s much more than that. It starts much earlier than that. It’s about, I mean, that’s coaching, you know, that’s helping people get to the bottom of what they’re really. I mean, it’s not a million miles off what we do. I mean we come at it from like coaching, but then financial and planning and you’re coming at coaching, but then like the, it’s all part of the same puzzle.

 

Naomi Kent:

[00:13:34 – 00:14:09]

It’s exactly the same thing. And the reason is because a lot of the time I often ask the question, you know, do you need to work? Right? Like do you have all your finances in check? And some people have had an amazing career and then they had something went wrong, you know, and they’ve lost everything. And so they’re having to build back. But they don’t want a full time job or they’re over retirement age. They have to keep working. So there’s, there’s lots of different scenarios so they absolutely come together. You can’t have a plan for your career without understanding your financial situation and where that is.

 

Richard Taylor:

[00:14:09 – 00:15:37]

You know, as we’re having this conversation, this is one of those conversations where I have clients scenarios flashing through my head. So I, There’s a few. This doesn’t happen every time. There are certain times when I’m thinking about the plan we built recently. I’m thinking about a client we met with yesterday. If you went into our financial planning software, there’s any number of our plans right now for us senior executive clients, we have some really senior execs who you, you make good money here, but boy, do you work hard. And they are mid-50s, and they’re saying to us, I haven’t got 10. I’m, you know, I’ve not got another 10 years. I’ve not got another five years of this. I don’t want to do this anymore. And we build a plan where the. We might put in two, three, four years worth of consulting. And he usually, he. Not always, but. But it tends to be. They don’t really know what they mean by that. They just know that they want out, but they haven’t quite got enough to. To never worry about money again. But if they do something for two, three, four years and they can hold off drawing on their assets and they’re also, they’re not finished. They just don’t want to go at 100 miles an hour anymore. And I always wonder, like, we put in this placeholder consulting and we attach an income to it, but it’s not. There’s no clarity on it. There’s no I. It’s always like a concern of mine, like, what do we really mean by this? How easy is it for you to go and get a consulting gig? Or whatever that means? So I’m hoping that this conversation can shed some light on that and.

 

Naomi Kent:

[00:15:37 – 00:16:51]

Well, let’s. So anything that you start from scratch is going to take a little bit of time to get off the ground, right? I mean, depending on your background, who you know, it might be a little easier for one person over another. And then there’s all sorts of things where you have to make your services unknown. You have to create maybe a website. Otherwise, like, who are you? You know, so there’s certain things that you need to do. And again, I help clients walk them through. Okay, if you want to set up this consulting job, this is what you need to do. But one of the things that I do with people, and I think this is really important, is I help them sort of test the water, I call it. So rather than saying, you know, for example, if you said, you know, I want to be a consultant, and I say, okay, well, let’s talk. Let’s talk it through. Like what. How do you see your day going? Well, you know, I’d be out with clients. I go, whoa, there’s. There’s also admin. There’s, you know, do you want to do that yourself or would you rather go and be part of another consulting group and have the support that they Would do, but then you wouldn’t make all the money. Would you be okay with that? So I kind of help people not go down a path, create the website, get the llc, get all this stuff together, and then six months later, go. That’s a great. I hate this.

 

Richard Taylor:

[00:16:51 – 00:16:52]

Yeah.

 

Naomi Kent:

[00:16:52 – 00:16:53]

I don’t even know how to do it.

 

Richard Taylor:

[00:16:53 – 00:17:05]

I just want to get up and talk to people. Yeah, I’d have to invoice. I don’t want to learn Cube QuickBooks online. And you know, and just to be really clear, when I. We put in consulting, you know, they don’t.

 

Naomi Kent:

[00:17:06 – 00:17:06]

They.

 

Richard Taylor:

[00:17:06 – 00:17:19]

I’m not convinced even want to be a consultant. It’s a placeholder for something else. I actually think the people I’m thinking of right now, board positions, maybe some coaching, but a board position would be even more interesting to them.

 

Naomi Kent:

[00:17:19 – 00:19:25]

Let’s also talk about boards in the UK and boards in the US Because I grew up working with boards in the UK and then went to the US But I still had quite a global kind of vision of we were a global company and we were fairly small. So you had a lot of. A lot of scope there. The UK and the US have a very different sort of setup, different types of companies. As you can imagine, many more companies in the United States. But one thing that is popping up and I think it’s they’ve always been around, but even more so in the last couple of years are what’s called an advisory board, which is a border or a group of people that act as advisors to the CEO. They don’t have fiduciary responsibility. They can’t vote, they can’t. You know, they don’t. None of that. No legal requirements, but they kind of just will chat with the CEO and maybe get together and have some strategic conversations about what they should be doing. And I’m seeing a lot of my clients getting onto these boards. And so those are good starting points. Again, do you even want to be on a board? Right. Let’s go find an advisory board. Let’s see how you get on with that. Let’s test the water with that first. And then some people they absolutely know because they’ve been on boards before. So then we just figure out, what do you want? How do we get there? Who do we know? In the UK and the US it’s very much a who knows who kind of space, and only because boards want to recruit people they trust. Right. And so if I’ve worked with you and I got to sit in a room with six other people and you, we want to know that you’re going to be able to get along with the group that’s here. So I think there’s also that piece of it. But, but the UK has a lot of other types of boards, a lot of government sort of entities and committees and things that you can get involved in. And you never know. A lot of UK companies might really want someone who understands the US market. So there’s a lot of kind of crossover there where you might be sort of a more unique board member because you’re British in the USA and you know the US market. You can also, you know, you also understand the UK market as well.

 

Richard Taylor:

[00:19:25 – 00:19:40]

So you’re saying there’s an opportunity for people. Let’s say our, our audience is, is expats in America, predominantly British, but not, not exclusively. There’s not just an opportunity for them to maybe get on American boards, but also British boards, maybe even European boards. Like.

 

Naomi Kent:

[00:19:40 – 00:20:19]

Absolutely. Okay, yeah, if that’s the, if that’s the angle they want to go down. Absolutely. I was actually just talking with a startup recently. They’re in the AI space and they’re in the UK, they’re in London. And they said we’ve had like 28, 000 people, you know, sign up for our, It’s a free, it’s a free platform right now. But like, you know, they’re like, we think this is growing pretty fast, has happened in the last couple of months. And they said so we want to take this to the usa. I said well what’s your plan? Well, we don’t know, like we don’t know what to do. Wouldn’t it be great if they had an advisor here who could tell them sort of hey, let me introduce you to this person or here’s how you get to this guy. And anyway, you do realize, I mean

 

Richard Taylor:

[00:20:19 – 00:20:34]

I’m sure you realize it as well in the cross border international space is half your expertise and it’s half who you know. Oh, I can connect you to this business advisor over here. I know this tax adviser, I know this business tax advisor that is, that’s half the battle.

 

Naomi Kent:

[00:20:34 – 00:21:02]

Well, we, we connected through the British American Business network. Right. So I do some work with them in Chicago and that’s actually how I connected with this company because they were like, hey, you know, they need a British connection in the United States and, and you know, they work very closely with the consulate. So you know, if you’re British in the, in, in the usa, there are places for you to go to kind of if you want to build Business and to your point, with sort of, you know, building your career and all these other things, it’s great places to network, great places to meet people.

 

Richard Taylor:

[00:21:02 – 00:21:17]

So can we talk about what’s. What does it entail being on a board? How much work is involved? Do I have to turn up every day to an office? Do I mean, am I reading, am I diving through financial reports every night? What’s involved, how much? What’s going to.

 

Naomi Kent:

[00:21:17 – 00:21:55]

Luckily, it’s not a full time job. Luckily. So you act as a strategic advisory team to a group, to the leadership team. Right. Board meetings will happen. I mean, I’ve seen a lot of different options, but we’ll just generalize generally on a quarterly basis or board meetings every other month. Some places a board meeting every month, but rare. Okay, so it’s not. But that board meeting might be an all day meeting and then you might need another eight hours to prepare for that board meeting.

 

Richard Taylor:

[00:21:55 – 00:21:58]

Just what does that mean, preparing?

 

Naomi Kent:

[00:21:58 – 00:22:10]

So you’ll get. Before a board meeting, you’ll get. And it can be sometimes showing this to the people who are watching it on the screen, but it can be a book of paperwork.

 

Richard Taylor:

[00:22:10 – 00:22:19]

They’re going to serve this opportunity. They’re going to give you a booklet, a file, a bind, whatever. They’re going to give this to you and say, right, you need to come to this meeting familiar with what’s in here.

 

Naomi Kent:

[00:22:19 – 00:22:30]

So rather than coming into the meeting and getting a presentation for half an hour and then discussing it, it’s like read the presentation beforehand and we’ll discuss it in the meeting is the best use of the time.

 

Richard Taylor:

[00:22:30 – 00:22:31]

And they’re always in person?

 

Naomi Kent:

[00:22:32 – 00:23:17]

Not always. They’re probably, I would say depends, depends on the organization. If it’s a local organization, I think, yes. But if it’s a national, you know, board, then most of the time I’ve seen them do virtual meetings and then one or two per year that are in person. During COVID obviously everything flipped. It went full time Zoom. And it was quite, I mean, this is a crazy story, but while, while this was all happening, a lot of CEOs called because we were, I was in a business that was helping, you know, push board members out and they said, oh, we’ve already seen two people, they can’t even log into Zoom. So, so they were like, I don’t, I don’t think they’re going to last very long.

 

Richard Taylor:

[00:23:17 – 00:23:17]

I can believe it.

 

Naomi Kent:

[00:23:17 – 00:25:56]

Yeah. So, you know, so, so there was, so this was, you know, everything sort of tailed off from that point. And some people just said, this isn’t for me. I like the in person, I’m done. Like it’s time for, it’s really time for retirement now. Right, okay. So they kind of just threw in the towel. And so then a whole bunch of new people came on and they kept some of the Zoom meetings, but then they realized that it wasn’t as effective and people were distracted on Zoom. And, and by the way, if you’re in a publicly traded company, you can’t be in a room with the door open having a conversation about a board meeting, because who’s going to be listening, right? It could be anyone. Could be your plumbers come round or your granddaughter and goes, oh, I just heard, you know, granddad talking about, you know, something, something that’s going on in his company. Let’s go, let’s go trade on that one. That’s trouble. Yeah, exactly. So I think they had to be very, very careful. And then they realized that that was just too much work. So a lot of them are back in person, but I’d say a lot of majority of the mid sized companies are still doing a lot of it on Zoom. But yeah, you’ll get this, you’ll get these documents, obviously, I’m showing you a piece of paper here. They’ll probably get them virtually or digitally. And some people even have iPads that have board, you know, the board platform on it. So it’s completely secure. Quick, fun fact, at a public company, you cannot write a note down on a piece of paper. No. Illegal. Yes. Because, well, imagine, you know, you’re sitting there and then somebody comes to serve the coffee or something and you’ve got your notes written there. So everything has to be done securely on an iPad. So anyway, so yeah, so the, the private companies know that that’s, that’s a bit extreme. But, but yeah, so you would go through these documents, you would read them, you would be then thinking, what questions do I need to ask the leadership team that I think things that might be missing from here. So the board should be. There should be three things they do oversight. So oversight of the business, like governing what’s going on? Because you could have a fraudulent CEO, right? Who’s checking up on the fraudulent CEO? It’s the board, right? That’s their job. They should be overseeing what the CEO does. So oversight. The next one is insight. These people generally have been around the block. They’ve, you know, started businesses, sold them. They’ve seen horror stories and they’ve seen success stories. So hopefully they bring some experience with them. That says hey, you should do this. And then the third one is foresight, the ability to be able to see around corners. You know, when you’re in a business, I mean, you as well, you’re working every day, everything’s just going at a million miles an hour. Someone comes in and says, have you thought about this? You know, I did not think about, you know. Exactly.

 

Richard Taylor:

[00:25:56 – 00:25:58]

You’re in the weeds every day.

 

Naomi Kent:

[00:25:58 – 00:26:37]

So they’re meant to be the kind of eyes and ears of. And they should also be well educated on the industry. They should understand the business. They should understand the, the potential risks associated with a decision. So oversight, insight, foresight are really the three things that they do. So you have to come to that meeting prepared to contribute, collaborate with others. Because you might be sitting next to Richard, who doesn’t agree with me on something. Right. But we’ve got to come to a conclusion that helps the business move forward. So there’s a lot of dynamics involved as well. I don’t know if we want to go down that road, but definitely there can be heated discussions in those rooms.

 

Richard Taylor:

[00:26:37 – 00:27:10]

Well, I meant you have successful people who got successful a certain way in a certain time, and there’s going to be egos involved and people who used to get in their own way and people who used to. So I, I can well imagine that. But also, you know, a lot of us kind of, kind of enjoy that repartee. You know, it keeps you, it keeps you engaged, keeps you sharp. Now, I can imagine there’s obviously going to conflicts and humans are humans. We’re always going to butt heads. But you can’t really, you know, even in your golf club, you can’t really be around other people without sometimes there being some tension. So I guess that.

 

Naomi Kent:

[00:27:10 – 00:28:19]

So, so being on a. Being a really effective board member is, yes, experience and all these things, but there’s attributes that you need to. So you need to have great communication skills. You need to have your ego in check because you’re not the CEO, you’re not the boss, but you need to be able to challenge but not be aggressive and mean with it. Right. You need to. You can’t assume the worst every time. So there’s a way to ask questions. You know what I’ll do for you and your listeners? I’ll send you a link to the top 10 attributes of highly successful board members that I built over the years. And it’s things like understanding your role. Like you can’t overstep the mark. You know, CEO says, oh, we’re going to go do, oh, Let me help, I’ll come in and help you. That’s not really your role to go and do work for the company. Right. And, and if you’re rude and you know, you just. There’s all sorts of things that, that, that make you an effective board member or not an effective board member. So I’ll share those with you. You can share those with people. Because I think a lot of people think, well, I’ve got to have been the CEO of some big company. Absolutely not. I know people who are great board members who never even made it to the C suite.

 

Richard Taylor:

[00:28:20 – 00:28:46]

That’s great. Actually, I have a few questions on that. I’ve thought that people might hold people back and that’s one of them. So I’ll come to that in a second. But just going back about the work involved. So we’ve got the, you get the pack of information, you’ve got to review that you turn up to the day, let’s say it’s in person, you have a full day board meeting and that’s going to be what the leadership team presenting to you or are you going to have to present or are you just there to, to, to, to participate and ask questions?

 

Naomi Kent:

[00:28:46 – 00:29:47]

It can be a combination of things. I don’t think the board, the board are sometimes proposing recommendations. So they’ll say, hey, this is our recommendation for like the CEO’s compensation plan or something like that. But generally it will be the leadership team of the CEO. In America, it’s the CEO mainly in Europe and us uk, it’s more of a team on the executive side. But, but yeah. So they will be driving the conversation and saying, hey, these are the strategic questions that we have that we need your help with or we need to sign off. Right. If we’re going to invest in a huge. Let’s say we’re going to purchase a new warehouse, but we could lease it. So they’re going to propose here and you’ll get the paperwork. These are the options for lease, these are the options for purchase. What do we do? Right. So then that would be a big discussion and you would have to make a decision. So there are decisions, discussions and just being notified of something. Right. So there’s different types of conversations you’ll have and sometimes you have to vote and sometimes you don’t.

 

Richard Taylor:

[00:29:48 – 00:29:50]

And what happens outside of those that meeting?

 

Naomi Kent:

[00:29:51 – 00:30:55]

So in many cases there are rules, so governance rules around what you can and cannot discuss outside of the meeting. So you and I couldn’t go and have dinner and just talk about the board meeting and make decisions and then buddy up and go back in. You know that it happens. Yes, but it’s not recommended and it’s not good practice to do that. You’ll find a lot of these investors when they own a big portion of the company, they’re usually doing things like that because they want to push things in the right direction or in their direction, whichever way that may be. But if you were just an independent director, you wouldn’t be wanting, you probably wouldn’t be involved in that. So, so no, there shouldn’t be too much conversation outside of the meeting. But to your point, there are usually social events that happen. You know, it could be a dinner just so everybody gets together and gets to know each other. Right. And actually that’s a big recommendation I give people when they first, they get on their first board is go and have a one to one with everyone, just get to know them. Hey, who’s your family? Where did you come from? What school did you go to?

 

Richard Taylor:

[00:30:55 – 00:30:56]

You know, it’s networking as well.

 

Naomi Kent:

[00:30:56 – 00:31:04]

Yeah, it is, it’s great networking. But it just, you know, if you’re going to have a difficult conversation with someone but you’ve already bonded, it makes it so much easier, right?

 

Richard Taylor:

[00:31:04 – 00:31:18]

100%. And what about like more work outside these meetings? Are you on committees? Do you have what you know is additional work out this, what if something happens to the company? Like emergency meetings?

 

Naomi Kent:

[00:31:18 – 00:31:56]

I imagine all of the above. Yeah, you can have all of the above and then in addition to other work that you may need to do. And it’s not, it’s not heavy, it’s not too heavy and don’t get me wrong, but depending on the company, depending on where it’s at. But I think the biggest piece that nobody talks about is the fact that you have to stay knowledgeable on the industry. You have to learn about the, you know, the competitors. I had a, I interviewed a board member a few years back and he said I’m just, I get genuinely interested in these companies. Like I love, like I like them. Even if it’s not a product I would ever buy.

 

Richard Taylor:

[00:31:57 – 00:31:58]

I just lose a curiosity.

 

Naomi Kent:

[00:31:58 – 00:31:58]

No.

 

Richard Taylor:

[00:31:58 – 00:32:08]

Right. And I think, I think, I think one of the key drivers of successful people, one of the key personality traits is curiosity that doesn’t get extinguished with age.

 

Naomi Kent:

[00:32:09 – 00:32:10]

That’s on my attributes list.

 

Richard Taylor:

[00:32:10 – 00:32:18]

Oh, is it great? Yeah, yeah, great, yeah. So that, that doesn’t just go away and I can imagine that’s a part of.

 

Naomi Kent:

[00:32:18 – 00:33:09]

Not at all. And I’ll tell you one, one thing I find quite interesting. Whenever I Interview a lot of board members and just ask them about what they’re doing and everything. And sometimes I’m in just a lunch or something and I realize after the lunch that I really didn’t ask them any questions, they just kept asking me questions. So they’re very. They want to know about what’s going. What are you seeing in the market, what’s happening, what new financial tools are out there, what are people doing with their money these days? Where do you recommend? You know, they’re trying to source information so they can become more knowledgeable and go back to their boardrooms and contribute that much better. So I think they’re just. You’re right, they’re genuinely curious and they want to learn. They’re lifelong learners. That’s actually something they all say they are. And that doesn’t mean doing lots of degrees. It’s just, they’re just, they’re just, you know, genuinely interested in learning new things.

 

Richard Taylor:

[00:33:09 – 00:34:59]

I’m excited to announce that Expat wealth has its first sponsor, the Global Financial Planning Institute. The GFPI exists to provide education, community tools, resources and ongoing research for financial planners and other advanced financial professionals working with international and cross border clients in the US And Americans abroad. I’m a GFP Institute fellow and I’ve put all our employees through their GFPI programs when they join us. I’ve met some great people. I’ve learned a ton. It’s a genuine community of internationally minded folk doing their best to serve their clients properly and critically sharing what they know in the oftentimes challenging and ambiguous US cross border environment. And as anyone in this sector will tell you, you’re always learning. So if you work with international clients and or Americans abroad or if this is an area you’re looking to get into, check out the gfpi@www.gfp.in stute you will be glad you did and I hope to see you there soon. You know, you know you talked before about they couldn’t get onto Zoom, right? There’s two sorts of people, right? There’s the people who can’t get onto Zoom in this day and age and just abandon it and give up. And I know it’s been give up on do I mean give up, just kind of give up on the stuff and then you might. He’s gone now. He’s been gone 10 years now. My grandpa, my grandfather was called Frank and he had a Twitter handle that was Frankie Boy 96 because he joined Twitter at 96 years of age to keep in touch with me. And my brother, I was in America, my brother was in Africa. And you know, he, he embraced email. If, if he was alive today, he’d be on Zoom. And you want to be that guy, right? You want to be, you want a lifelong learning. You want to, you want to grasp with this. So it’s not going to, you know, it’s just going to get. Yeah, you want to be, you want to be that guy. And I think that’s.

 

Naomi Kent:

[00:34:59 – 00:36:34]

I had a grandfather called Frank, too. Everybody. Didn’t everybody have a grandfather called Frank? Yeah, so, so I’ll tell you a quick story. So I just actually launched a book. It’s called Wanted a Board Career. And it’s all about getting on board. Thank you. And the foreword. So there’s a little story right at the start, and I asked a gentleman that I’ve known for, about, I want to say maybe, maybe coming on six or eight years. And when I was doing some board training with people, he would come in and be a guest speaker. And he’s in Chicago. His name is Dennis Jacazian and he has been on boards for many, many years. I’m not going to disclose his age. Actually, you could probably find out his age because it’s public knowledge, because he’s been on public company boards. But I don’t exactly know how old he is, but whenever I meet with him, he is at the forefront of everything that is going on. He’s like, let me tell you about AI. I’m teaching. He’s teaching AI and he’s in his 80s. I want to be that guy teaching AI at the university of Chicago. But he’s always understanding what’s going on. Again, you don’t have to be a techie. It’s not about that. He understands the business concept. And then because he’s run major businesses and been on so many boards, he’s been over a hundred boards. He started when he was 16. I know I always say start young. That’s very young. We say start as quickly as you can. But he even says, you know, I just, I’ve seen the way, the way businesses work and they operate. It’s the same thing, it’s just a different product.

 

Richard Taylor:

[00:36:34 – 00:37:04]

Right. This is why when we spoke, I got so excited and said, you got to come on the podcast because we work with expatriates. Expatriates. In my experience, I’m biased. Right. But we are. They are. They are. They’re my favorite people. They’re bold, they’re adventurous, they’re open minded, which, you know, throw in curious in there. Right. And that I think those attributes match marry perfectly with what we’re talking about here. And I think expatriate, an open minded, interested, engaged, adventurous expat with all that experience, this could be perfect for them.

 

Naomi Kent:

[00:37:05 – 00:38:12]

And I think also they, they bring a different perspective. Yes, right. They bring that, you know, perspective of someone who’s new to the country but then also some European, potentially like UK European and maybe traveled. Right. Been to other countries, so understand the, the cultures of different places. No, I totally agree with you and I, and I think they, they talk a lot about diversity on boards and it’s all about bringing, you know, you can’t have a bunch of CEOs just sitting around a room or CFOs. Like you said, it’ll be egos all attacking each other. Right. So you have to have a balance. And so again, if your business has a global component, then you should have someone who can really think globally and who understands that space. And like I said, if it’s a UK company looking to move to the United States, that could be, that could be a huge value proposition. So I think I always say to people, find your, your, your niche, right? Find your area of expertise. It may not be the same as the guy next to you, but you, you have to kind of figure that out.

 

Richard Taylor:

[00:38:12 – 00:38:35]

Just back to the, the total work involved. Right. And I’m sure it varies board, but just as a general rule, right, I, I’m on one board. I know I’ve got the eight. I know I’ve got the, the, the preparation to do. I’ve got the, an eight hour meeting, full day meeting every quarter. Outside of that, how much more work do I need to be thinking? Yeah, how much? I mean it’s hard to talk about in terms of hours, but just, just how much work is involved?

 

Naomi Kent:

[00:38:35 – 00:38:48]

Yeah, it’s really outside of what we’ve described. It’s a bit like how long is a piece of string, right. So there could be a PR disaster and you’re called up on a 3 o’ clock on a Sunday and like we’re having an emergency meeting and you’ve

 

Richard Taylor:

[00:38:48 – 00:38:50]

got to go, right, wherever you are. Yeah, yeah.

 

Naomi Kent:

[00:38:51 – 00:39:40]

Unless you really cannot and then whatever. But, but there are things like that that might pop up, but other than that, no. So that’s why people sit on multiple boards. I have a client of mine and he sits on a not for profit board which by the way, not for profits are very different depending on, you know, which ones you sit on, there can be ones that you sit on and you’re sitting next to the CEO of a major company and then others where you’re sitting next to someone that you know, just not, not someone in a corporate space at all. So choose wisely on the nonprofits. And then they also sit on a privately held sort of, I wouldn’t say it’s startup, it’s like a family business, but it’s, it’s, it’s growing really quickly. And then also has a publicly traded company. And he loves that. He loves.

 

Richard Taylor:

[00:39:41 – 00:39:42]

That’s a real example.

 

Naomi Kent:

[00:39:42 – 00:39:42]

Yes.

 

Richard Taylor:

[00:39:42 – 00:39:54]

A not for profit, a small privately held family business that’s growing quickly. And a, and a publicly traded and all the rigmarole and the, you know, the cachet that goes with that there is, it’s cachet and it’s imagine hassle because.

 

Naomi Kent:

[00:39:54 – 00:39:55]

Exactly.

 

Richard Taylor:

[00:39:55 – 00:39:55]

Right.

 

Naomi Kent:

[00:39:55 – 00:40:29]

Notes. And the family business also like him, not only because he’s been in these bigger companies, but he brings the credibility. So on paper and on an investor deck or on their website and they go, here’s our advice, here’s our board of directors. And he says, oh, so and so who’s on the board of whatever company? I think, I think there’s a lot, the company gets a lot out of it. The individual gets a lot out of it. And it’s not just experience, it’s also a credibility factor. And that’s with these advisory boards I was mentioning earlier. That’s another space where you can thrive.

 

Richard Taylor:

[00:40:30 – 00:40:33]

And to be clear, these. Are they all paid positions?

 

Naomi Kent:

[00:40:33 – 00:40:35]

Yes. Well, the nonprofit is not.

 

Richard Taylor:

[00:40:36 – 00:40:37]

If you’re on a nonprofit board, you’re not getting paid.

 

Naomi Kent:

[00:40:38 – 00:42:23]

You’re not getting paid. That’s why I think you need to choose wisely. If you’re young and you’re listening to this or you’re, or you’ve never been on a board and you’ve been told, hey, you should probably go and join a nonprofit. I want you to think about three things. One is, is it going to give you the leadership experience that you need? So if you’re a little younger and you’re thinking, yeah, I’d love to be on a nonprofit board. Just think, you know, is it, is it going to expand your skills? Number two, you want to figure out, is it good for your brand? So I don’t know if I’m in the financial services industry. I think a not for profit that, I don’t know, helped, let’s say, communities who might need help with financial kind of advice. And we, we donate and we donate our time and we give financial advice for free for certain Types of people. Amazing. That’s in line. Or it could be, we’re gonna go save the pandas. And you’re like, okay, well I like the pandas, but this doesn’t really line up with my. So only choose one nonprofit. If you really wanna be part of the panda saving crowd, that’s great, do it. But. But maybe there’s another type of nonprofit that can actually boost your career. And then the third one, which probably the most important is look at who else is sitting on that board. You want to be around a boardroom table of a nonprofit with some heavy hitting people where you go, wow, this is a great group of people. Not I’ll be the smartest person in the room there. Right. So think about making sure that you, you set up and you would approach the right nonprofit. Because if you are sitting around a boardroom table with other CEOs, CFOs, or people that, that you admire, you can really build your network. It’s a phenomenal way to do it.

 

Richard Taylor:

[00:42:23 – 00:42:32]

Well, that sounds like the perfect way to one get experience and to perhaps line up future opportunities in the nonprofit space or in the for profit space.

 

Naomi Kent:

[00:42:32 – 00:42:58]

Exactly. That’s sort of what I’m saying is that you shouldn’t see it as a free, a free board. I’m, I’ve known a lot of people. In fact, a client of mine about just over a year ago got on a public company board because of someone she sat on a nonprofit board with. Yeah, yeah, so. And I’ve lots and lots of those types of situations. But again, if you choose the wrong nonprofit, those opportunities just won’t be there. So that’s, that’s the reason.

 

Richard Taylor:

[00:42:58 – 00:43:06]

And is it, is it pay just, you know, regular money for services or is it sometimes shares or do they want you to invest in these companies?

 

Naomi Kent:

[00:43:07 – 00:43:58]

So some of the very small companies will give equity, some of the larger companies will give equity plus pay, and some of them in between will do a combination of both or one or the other. One thing I do want to say though is that one of the most lucrative board experiences that I’ve ever heard about was of a woman who joined a board and got no pay at all except for some equity. And then the company IPO’d and she made about $10 million. That’s, that’s a pretty good free, free work. So I always say to people, don’t, you know, don’t get put off by a role that is equity. Only if you’re starting out your board career, right. And you’ve just looking at retirement and all these sort of things, you have to start somewhere. So get, get experience and don’t, don’t worry too much about the money will come. Right.

 

Richard Taylor:

[00:43:58 – 00:44:18]

And I don’t want to, I don’t, you know, I don’t want to get too into the weeds on the money, but just, it’s real money, you know, I don’t want people thinking it’s just, you know, because we work with senior executives, they, they’ve got big salaries and big lifestyles and yeah, we’re not talking that kind of income generally, but, but, but we are talking real money.

 

Naomi Kent:

[00:44:18 – 00:45:11]

Yeah. So on the low end you could be, it could be $50,000 a year. On the high end, it could be 150, 300,000 a year. 300,000 on some of the public company boards, yes. And they have share plans and things like that as well. So they’re motivated business to succeed. A client of mine got on a board about a year ago. It was a private company, PE backed 100 grand a year. But, you know, he, there were some times when he had to do a little extra work, but he was, you know, retired from his executive role and he just loved working with them. He said he loved the team. And actually that’s one thing to add here, which is whenever I ask people, why did you enjoy working on that board? Why did you enjoy serving on that board? Every time it’s the people. It’s not the product. It’s not, they don’t. Yeah, it could be anything.

 

Richard Taylor:

[00:45:11 – 00:45:13]

Doesn’t it always comes back to the people?

 

Naomi Kent:

[00:45:13 – 00:45:14]

It really does.

 

Richard Taylor:

[00:45:15 – 00:45:22]

People are the worst and the best. Yeah, the worst thing about my job are the best thing about my job. And I’m sure that’s always going to be the case for everyone.

 

Naomi Kent:

[00:45:22 – 00:45:31]

It’s true. So think about fit. You know, if you’re thinking about joining a board and you think, where do I go to find it? Find it through the people that you like and trust. Go to speak to them first. That would be my first.

 

Richard Taylor:

[00:45:31 – 00:45:33]

What if I don’t know anyone on a board?

 

Naomi Kent:

[00:45:33 – 00:47:23]

So board roles are not just covered by board members. So some of the biggest decision makers of board opportunity or board role changes are actually the CEO. So the CEO, the cfo, sometimes even the general counsel, sometimes in somebody in a legal position, they’re very knowledgeable about board roles that are, that are out there. Another group of people, and this is what I learned when I was at Boradax, is the consulting industry. So investment bankers, they’re on the phone with their clients all day. Even private wealth advisors. They were my clients at Boradax and often the guys would say, oh yeah, you know, my client says he’s looking for new board members. What do I do? Right. So they would just be chatting with the private wealth advisor and say, oh yeah, I’m in some difficulties right now just dealing with a board member. And you know, they just throw it into conversation. Lawyers, corporate lawyers, they get an earful as well from the CEOs that they work with. Oh yeah, we’re having some. Do we got to get rid of this board member. We need some help with that. Right. So, so actually there’s a whole group of people that you don’t see. They’re behind the scenes, but they’re major influencers in decisions that are made. And then if, for example, if you are, let’s say you’re an expat here in the United States, go to where you’re going to find those types of companies or those types of people. So again, if it’s this startup community, right, in the UK that are looking to sell into the US go hit up the startup community in, in the, in the United Kingdom. And so it’s not just the board members. And, and I always say to people, try to short network with board members, it’s very good idea to do that. But they’re not generally the decision makers of board roles. It’s generally going to be the executive team.

 

Richard Taylor:

[00:47:24 – 00:47:54]

I didn’t know that. So Naomi, so let’s say I’ve listened to this podcast. I’m completely sold. I want a career in board, I want to get on boards, but I’ve got no idea where to start. Are you saying like I should just start by the basics? Updating LinkedIn, maybe getting a website and then simply going out and talking to people, networking people. I know going to the British American business groups or whatever your networking group is and just putting it out there. I’m looking to get onto boards as simple as, you know, I think the

 

Naomi Kent:

[00:47:54 – 00:48:14]

first step you want to do is figure out what types of boards. So we’ve talked today about lots of the, you know, the non profit, we’ve talked about the advisory boards, we’ve talked about small companies, large companies. It’s not, it’s not that you start small and you get larger. Some people just stay with startups and they stay there and that’s all they do.

 

Richard Taylor:

[00:48:15 – 00:48:17]

Some people, because that’s what they, that’s,

 

Naomi Kent:

[00:48:17 – 00:48:27]

that’s what they’re passionate. They bring, they bring that, that and then some people go into major public companies and stay there. They don’t, they don’t leave from that space.

 

Richard Taylor:

[00:48:27 – 00:48:30]

And you find some people go into public companies and think, do you know what? This is just too, this is too much.

 

Naomi Kent:

[00:48:31 – 00:49:07]

Absolutely, absolutely. And public companies actually have age limits. So you have to kind of leave the board. When you get to 72, 73, you get to 75. Pretty much the investors are going to be like, this guy’s gotta go. Yeah. I mean, and it’s good to bring in new people, do that in Congress, term limits, a lot of different places. So, so yeah, so there’s, there’s, there’s, there’s that and then, and the reason you want to figure out what kind of board you want to join is because each of them require a different set of skills and attributes and everything else. Quick example, do you mean right down

 

Richard Taylor:

[00:49:07 – 00:49:14]

to like the targeting the company or do you mean just like I want to be in startups and AI, Jason, that’s it.

 

Naomi Kent:

[00:49:14 – 00:52:05]

Yes. So give, but target it to a point where it’s getting, it’s clear. So it’s size, perhaps industries not as important, but size, what problems are they trying to solve? What’s the ownership structure? I’ll give you an example. And this is some work I do with my clients is, let’s say you said to me, well, Amy, I’ve always been a CEO at PE backed companies. If you know how to work with pe, they’re gonna like you on boards because you know, you know their style, right? It’s different from a lot of different styles of working. So you want to kind of fit in with the culture. And we talked about before about having people around you that you like, they’re going to want to like you to be on the board too. So it needs to go both ways. So figure out what kind of board you want to join, then think about what it is that you’ll actually bring to that board. So if it’s a startup, they might be looking for fundraising, right? They might be looking to fundraise. If it’s a non profit, they might be looking to fundraise or have an event. So can you help with that? If it’s a publicly traded company, it could be M and A. Right. I don’t, I don’t know what it is, but you have to sort of make that list. And then from there what you need to do is then create this, create a bio, create some sort of document because immediately if someone’s interested in you, they go, hey, send me something. And you got this, you know, Word document that you created 10 years ago, you just update. No, that’s not gonna, that’s not gonna cut it. Right. And plus, these are prestigious roles, right? If you think about it, in this hierarchy of a company, they sit on top of the CEO. So you can’t come with, you know, well, I’ll just send you some, an email with some information. Oh, go check out my LinkedIn. That’s not good enough. Right, but your LinkedIn does need to be optimized for it. So change some of the language, change the wording. Photo is critically important. A lot of people have these old photos of them with pinstripe suits that from their banking days or whatever. You want to look a bit more mature. You know, I say people, you want to look old, you don’t want to look too young. Right. In your photo. Because board members don’t tend to be in their 30s, 20s or 30s. Right. So, and then the final piece is figure out who to speak to because again, if you want to get to PE backed boards, go speak to PE operating partners. That’s pretty much it. So. And then what? I find that the success that happens is when it’s top of mind, the opportunities come about. It’s funny, I just met yesterday with a group of people and I had given a presentation to a CFO group in Florida online. It was all virtual on a Saturday or something. And they all connected and, and I talked about how to be on a board and everything. And one of the guys that was, was there in the meeting, was there at the event and I shook his hand, I said hello. And he said, oh, you know, since that meeting, I got on two boards. I said, what?

 

Richard Taylor:

[00:52:05 – 00:52:07]

It’s just top of mind, right? Yeah, just top up.

 

Naomi Kent:

[00:52:07 – 00:52:28]

The opportunities were already there. And he said, just now I was thinking about it now, I asked, you know, let’s say you’re consulting with someone and they go, yeah, well the project’s over, see you later, bye. Instead, why don’t you say, hey, could I, Is there an opportunity for me to serve on your board? Those types of things generate, you know, the opportunity.

 

Richard Taylor:

[00:52:28 – 00:52:33]

Well, sometimes. Will they, will people, will they create a position for you? Or is it just, is it always one in, one out?

 

Naomi Kent:

[00:52:33 – 00:53:04]

I’ve seen a lot of that, yeah. So advisory board, I mean, be as large as you want it to non profit boards. I’ve seen them with 40 people on the board. I mean, it’s a bit crazy, that’s a bit wild. But public nightmare. Public companies have a few more rules around, one in, one out. But those Are. Those are like the tip of the iceberg. It’s so rare to be on a board like that. Most people are on something. Something a little bit more kind of, you know, flexible. So, yes, there’s flexibility there.

 

Richard Taylor:

[00:53:04 – 00:53:15]

All right, I’ve got a few questions I want to throw to you. Just before I do that, let me just ask you, have you. Have you ever had it happen where someone just. It just wasn’t for them. They’ve gone through all this work, they’ve gotten boards, and they’ve gone, like, you know what? I just don’t like this. Does that happen?

 

Naomi Kent:

[00:53:16 – 00:53:24]

I think. I think I. I have a client right now who doesn’t enjoy one board that she’s on.

 

Richard Taylor:

[00:53:24 – 00:53:29]

But that’s not. That’s not that she doesn’t not enjoy being on the board. It’s just. It’s the people.

 

Naomi Kent:

[00:53:29 – 00:53:50]

Yeah, correct. So I. I’ve not seen people get onto boards and then say, I don’t enjoy the work. But they may say, that was not a good experience or I just didn’t enjoy the people. I didn’t enjoy what we were doing. That’s different. So, yeah, no, I. I don’t. I don’t see a lot of people saying they don’t enjoy it. There’s. It’s. It’s. It can. It’s very rewarding.

 

Richard Taylor:

[00:53:50 – 00:53:51]

Sounds rewarding.

 

Naomi Kent:

[00:53:51 – 00:53:51]

Yeah, it’s great.

 

Richard Taylor:

[00:53:51 – 00:53:53]

It sounds like the best of both worlds.

 

Naomi Kent:

[00:53:53 – 00:53:59]

And you get to be in a room, amazing people. You’re constantly learning from them, too. It’s not just you.

 

Richard Taylor:

[00:53:59 – 00:54:11]

It really sounds. You get that you get to remain senior. You get some of the prestige, you get some of the. The perks. You get to be around people. You get, say, engaged. You don’t have all the responsibilities. You’re not doing 40, 50, 60 hours a week.

 

Naomi Kent:

[00:54:11 – 00:54:12]

Nope.

 

Richard Taylor:

[00:54:12 – 00:54:12]

It really.

 

Naomi Kent:

[00:54:13 – 00:54:13]

Yeah.

 

Richard Taylor:

[00:54:13 – 00:54:24]

I mean, I think it sounds great, but here are some questions that immediately sprang to mind. So, I’ve never been on a board. What’s. You know, I’ve never been on a board. Well, you kind of answered. This whole podcast has been about answering that.

 

Naomi Kent:

[00:54:24 – 00:54:51]

Well, no, I mean, yeah, but. But, you know, educate yourself on board the board responsibilities. You need to know what your responsibilities are on your role. And then. And then get. Get a plan together. And the plan we’ve sort of laid out before just a minute ago. So, yes, that would be research the role. So, you know, you will like it. Because there are people that go, it’s not for me. And they haven’t even gone there yet. There are reasons. But why, by the way why some CEOs never go onto boards.

 

Richard Taylor:

[00:54:51 – 00:54:51]

Oh, really?

 

Naomi Kent:

[00:54:52 – 00:54:59]

Like, okay, they would like to be the boss. They don’t want to be the advisor. Yeah, exactly. But that’s okay. But yeah, it’s not for them. It’s not.

 

Richard Taylor:

[00:54:59 – 00:55:15]

At least have the self awareness to know it and not inflict that on other people. Right. You mentioned this before, actually. I’ve never run a company or I’ve never been that senior or do you. I’ve never been on the C suite or I was an engineer. You know, I, I was really good at what I did, but I didn’t run the company. I wasn’t responsible for the P L.

 

Naomi Kent:

[00:55:16 – 00:56:43]

Yeah, P L. Responsibility is, is an important one. Oh, it is, but it’s not. But I, But I have a client. I’m working with two public company boards, no P and L. But she has a medical background. So she brings this medical expertise that no one else does and it’s a health care company and they have a lot of business people and her. So you have to, you know, sometimes it can. It doesn’t matter. Saying that again. We talked about the starter boards, advisory boards, nonprofit boards. You know, you can get involved in those and you can still get a lot of value out of them. Some boards will just bring you on because they like you. Right. If you. I’ve got this saying I tell people is like don’t tell people what kind of a board member you’d be. Show them. So ask them questions, hey, what’s going on in your business right now? What are you worrying about? And when they say I’m worried about these three things, say, hey, well, have you thought about this? Have you thought about that? Suddenly I walk away from a meeting with you thinking, wow, I just learned so much from that. You know, how can I have this on a daily? You know, how can I have you at the end of a phone call when I need you? And so that could be a board role. I have a client of mine and he doesn’t even, I told you, doesn’t even have a degree and he’s on multiple boards and he’s run major. I mean, so, so it’s not a qualification thing. It’s not a P and L thing necessarily, but these things do help, right? You just have to find your fit.

 

Richard Taylor:

[00:56:43 – 00:56:55]

My next one is actually I can’t read slash understand financial statements confidently. And it sounds like you’re saying that can be a problem, but it’s not necessarily a deal breaker if you’re bringing something else to the table.

 

Naomi Kent:

[00:56:56 – 00:58:16]

I I. There’s a story actually that someone told me recently. There was a public company that brought, that was in the tech space and they brought on the CEO of a company that was high tech for kids. Like it was like a kids thing. And they thought by bringing this guy on and by the way, he was about 30 and they thought by bringing him onto the board it would build their reputation for being more of like a cool thing for younger people. And one of the board members told me they were not in the boardroom but they heard that it was the board and then him, like he just sat there without a lot to contribute because he hadn’t done any of this before. He was just wide eyed. This guy must though, why am I even here right in the room with these 60 year old people who have run major businesses and I’m just here with my, you know, young people technology, this kind of fun app that we’ve got, you know, so there are, there are times when that, that’s gonna feel awkward and, and they said it did. The whole board thought it was awkward and they were kind of left out of a lot of things because they just couldn’t understand. So that’s a problem. I don’t think you want to be there if you are not comfortable with financial statements and things like that. I actually recommend you go do a course or something and just get.

 

Richard Taylor:

[00:58:16 – 00:58:17]

So it’s not insurmountable.

 

Naomi Kent:

[00:58:17 – 00:58:18]

No.

 

Richard Taylor:

[00:58:18 – 00:58:25]

If you’re really committed to this and because you know you can get pretty familiar with financial stuff pretty quickly.

 

Naomi Kent:

[00:58:25 – 00:59:02]

I always say to people, wait until you get on the board and then figure it out. Right. Because sometimes you get on a board, you’re going to go through an onboarding. Right? Onboarding is where you join and they tell you everything about the company. So that you arrive in your first board meeting not going, what, what on earth is going on? Right. So they will take you through their financial statements. And you know this, everyone’s financial statements look different. There’s a different term, different this different business model. So you have to learn it anyway. So. But I do think if you really feel like you want to build the confidence, then go and do some sort of financial literacy course. Yeah.

 

Richard Taylor:

[00:59:02 – 00:59:16]

And last one, I know nothing about an industry or a profession other than my own. Does that mean I’m, I can only focus? I know financial services. Can I only do financial services? Or you know, can I think about other stuff as well?

 

Naomi Kent:

[00:59:17 – 01:01:02]

So I, I recommend people think about business as a business model, not about industry. So how does financial services make money? What does it look like? So it’s online digital services mainly. It’s highly regulated, it’s international. You have tax things and all kinds of things. Right. What, what business looks like that? But isn’t that right? Maybe argue healthcare, highly regulated international services, products like a supply chain. Right. There’s a lot of things going on, so you have to think a little differently. And then there’s fintech, right? A fintech company that wants to sell into Morgan Stanley. And you come out of Goldman and Morgan Stanley and JP Morgan. You’ve been at all these companies, they’d love to have you on the board because you can advise them on how to, you know, get their product into some of these investment banks. Because they’re not easy, it’s not easy to get your product in there. They’re full of vendors. Right. It’s a very over saturated place. But how do you stand out? So you could maybe advise that. So you have to think it’s not about my industry. Although you can be an industry expert and there’s a lot of value to that. But you can also flip the switch. I’ll tell you one group of companies that is popping up everywhere with advisory boards are AI companies. And so, but they’re not tech people on those boards, it’s all industry people on those boards. So if you’re selling an AI solution for manufacturing, I don’t want an AI guy on my board. I’m already doing the AI. I need a manufacturing person on my board who knows nothing about AI because I want to pick their brains. Problems are you trying to solve in your plant? What’s the warehouse?

 

Richard Taylor:

[01:01:02 – 01:01:14]

My wife runs talent and recruitment for a very, very large organization and she gets approached by that stuff all the time. AI companies were trying to solve recruitment problems and she’s very, very senior there.

 

Naomi Kent:

[01:01:15 – 01:01:21]

She should, she should look into it. Yeah.

 

Richard Taylor:

[01:01:21 – 01:01:41]

So I don’t normally do this, but because what, what you do is so unique, would you spend a minute just talking about what you do, like your services, how you help people like our clients like us go from oh, this is really interesting to getting a board position.

 

Naomi Kent:

[01:01:41 – 01:05:45]

So I do a combination of advising, mentoring and coaching. And I take people through a program. So it’s modular, but there’s also coaching involved. So that kind of go in different directions. But it starts out with an assessment where I take people through to understand what their background is, where they’ve been, what they’ve done. And I almost interview them to figure out what kinds of boards might be a good fit. And sometimes after that first meeting, people are very surprised at the ideas I’ve thrown out because they’d never really thought about it. And other people are like, yeah, that’s sort of where I thought I would be. So, you know, we kind of. And then. And then during the rest of the program, we still try to figure out where we should be going because it’s still an ongoing thing. Then I do their branding, and branding is, what are you going to say and how are you going to say it? There are two questions that people I think, fall down a little bit on. One is, why do you want to be on a board? I’ve heard all sorts of things. I heard one guy say, my wife just wants me out the house. That’s funny. But do not tell anybody what you just told me. And then. And. And so you want to have a really crisp reason benefiting whoever it is, you’re going to be on the board. Not all about you, but about them. You want to also tie in your board experience because you can say, well, I want to be on a board because I know what being on a board is all about. I’ve run a board meeting, I’ve done this, I’ve done that. The second question that you want to prepare for is tell me about yourself. Pretty easy when you’re an executive. Well, I’ve been a CEO and I’ve done CEO things, or I’ve done a CFO and I’ve done CFO things. Now you’ve got to tell me about yourself in relation to a board role. So we have to sort of flip the conversation just a little bit there and work in some new vocabulary. So rather than saying, you know, I was building strategic plans and doing this and doing that, you want to talk about that oversight, that insight, that foresight, like, oh, I can see around corners. This is what I would do. This is how I would be in a board meeting. So I prepare them for just the reality of what it’s like to join a board. Then I take them through, I write a bio for them. A board bio. Writing board bios is not easy. I think that you don’t have to use fancy, fluffy language, you just have to be. I mean, these people have been made amazing roles and had amazing experiences, so you don’t need to overdo it. And then I also do their LinkedIn profile. So I’ve taken LinkedIn profiles looking sort of just like a boring old LinkedIn profile to looking like a board director profile. And so anything from, again, the photograph, the title, the banner, you know how they Describe their roles. One person, like, actually, I think all of everybody in the world has done this. They just start out with a LinkedIn profile 10 years ago, whenever LinkedIn came about 15 years ago. And then they just keep adding to it. Right. They never went back to their first job to look. And it says, you know, manage 12 people and you know, get rid of that. Right. So it’s all, it’s a whole refresh. And they sometimes have a university in there that they’ve listed twice. Everything’s repeated. I mean, yeah, so people don’t really go into their own profile. So I do that, I dig in. We look at what they’re doing. If they want to post, I help them with that too. Not everybody does, but if they do say, hey, I’d like to post once a week or once a month. Okay, let’s figure out what we want to post about. And then, and then I do a relationship map. So we look at who do they know, who do I know? Sometimes I’m, I’m introducing them to people as well and helping them make connections in the right place because. And people often think, well, I’ve got to go and speak to hundreds of people. No, you actually need to speak to about three to five people to start and then see where that goes. Because if you can, if you can say the right thing to the right person at the right time, like the guy that said, I’m now on two boards. Right. It just, it was already there. Right. It just needed to, just needed to be said or needed, needed to be requested.

 

Richard Taylor:

[01:05:45 – 01:05:48]

And how long are you typically, typically working with someone?

 

Naomi Kent:

[01:05:48 – 01:06:09]

It can be anywhere between like a 10 hour program to a 20 hour program. And then there are some clients I have that I work with for 12 or 18 months. Those are generally people who are coming out of a business. So they’re, they’re planning their retirement. But for people, I mean, I have a lot of people who are still in their roles. CEOs of companies, CFOs of companies.

 

Richard Taylor:

[01:06:09 – 01:06:11]

They’ve just got, you know, they’re starting to think about what next.

 

Naomi Kent:

[01:06:11 – 01:06:12]

Exactly.

 

Richard Taylor:

[01:06:12 – 01:06:13]

And then they’re okay.

 

Naomi Kent:

[01:06:13 – 01:06:13]

Exactly.

 

Richard Taylor:

[01:06:13 – 01:06:21]

And I imagine that would be your advice. Don’t wait till you’ve, you know, you’ve walked away and you’re just, you’re wondering what to do.

 

Naomi Kent:

[01:06:21 – 01:06:32]

Yeah, you’ve had your retirement party and then you’re like, right, yeah, I’m gonna, I hear this a lot. I’m gonna do my retirement. Retirement. I’m going to go on a cruise for three months and then I’LL go and join boards and I’m like, start now, start before.

 

Richard Taylor:

[01:06:32 – 01:06:32]

Yeah.

 

Naomi Kent:

[01:06:32 – 01:07:19]

And then you’re hitting the ground running because it doesn’t take. I have had clients who’ve got on boards within weeks of working. Like again, it’s the, the opportunity was already there, they just hadn’t gone out to find it. But most people, it’s a 3, 6, 9, 12 month, you know, and again, it’s not constant daily searching but it’s just a process. Right. And you need to get to know people and the time has to be right for them and for you. Just to put it into perspective, private companies can make decisions really quickly, but a public company, you could be 18 months waiting for to join a board. Well, because someone has to retire and then the invest and then the vote and then the this and that, the background check and you know, it’s quite, it’s quite involved at the public company end.

 

Richard Taylor:

[01:07:19 – 01:07:21]

So remark, tell people where they can find you, please.

 

Naomi Kent:

[01:07:22 – 01:08:29]

Yeah, so I’m on LinkedIn so you can go to Naomi Kent, the boardroom company. And also my website is www.theboardroomco.com so those are probably the two best places. But LinkedIn, I’m always open to connecting with people and actually I, one of the things I do is I have a, on my website there’s a contact page and there’s a 15 minute meeting you can set up. If you tell me a bit about yourself and you tell, send me your resume, I can spend 15 minutes just giving you some advice on where I think you should probably take your next step. Having worked at Board X for many, many years, I saw thousands of board profiles and so it’s almost like I’ve got all this information running around in my head. So the minute I see something, I can pretty much give you a path like here’s probably where your first board is going to be and here’s where your second board is going to be. So I, and that’s helpful for people to kind of think, well okay, at least I know where I’m going now because that’s the, that’s the piece that usually people don’t get off the ground because they’re just not sure, you know, what they look even looking for. Right. So I can, I can help with that. And that’s just a consultation. I’ll do complimentary and tell us about

 

Richard Taylor:

[01:08:29 – 01:08:30]

the book one more time.

 

Naomi Kent:

[01:08:30 – 01:08:42]

Yeah. So wanted a board career. I wanted a board career, yes. Yeah, I should probably put a pause there. It’s very important.

 

Richard Taylor:

[01:08:42 – 01:08:43]

So this is on Amazon.

 

Naomi Kent:

[01:08:43 – 01:09:15]

It is on Amazon, Yeah. And I’ve got digital, physical, and then the audiobook as well. And it pretty much takes people through the framework of how to get on a board. The things that I’ve described. There’s also a section in it about interview techniques and which questions you’re going to get asked an interview. And there’s a whole long list of questions which I think is hugely valuable for people who are about to embark on an interview. I do the interview prep with people too. You can kind of talk to me. But the book also lays it out quite nicely, so you can look at that as well.

 

Richard Taylor:

[01:09:15 – 01:09:16]

Go check it out, folks.

 

Naomi Kent:

[01:09:16 – 01:09:16]

Yeah.

 

Richard Taylor:

[01:09:16 – 01:09:18]

Naomi, this has been fantastic.

 

Naomi Kent:

[01:09:18 – 01:09:21]

Have I, have I inspired you to join boards?

 

Richard Taylor:

[01:09:21 – 01:09:54]

I’m talking to you, but I’m thinking we need to clients. I think about my wife, I’m thinking about me. Like you really have got me. You’ve got me thinking. And I think this is such a. It put it this way. I talked about, I talked to senior executives about their retirement all the time. Everyone mentions consultancy. No one mentions this. And this I think sounds way better and way more appropriate for them. So I, I hope people listening are, are as enthused and excited and, you know, and, and check you out. So thank you very much.

 

Naomi Kent:

[01:09:54 – 01:09:55]

Thank you, Richard. Thanks for having me.

 

Richard Taylor:

[01:09:55 – 01:09:57]

Okay, enjoy New York.

 

Naomi Kent:

[01:09:57 – 01:09:57]

Thank you.

 

Richard Taylor:

[01:09:58 – 01:10:56]

All right, folks, that’s another episode of Expat wealth under Our Belts. Thank you for listening. I appreciate it. And I appreciate you. If you’re enjoying the show and would like to support the mission, which is to help ambitious expats thrive in America and ask you to subscribe to the POD wherever you listen and also consider leaving a rating and review. This stuff really does matter. Please help us get this information to the people who need it. That is to your fellow expats. Just a quick reminder that this show is brought to you by Plan First Wealth. We are a US based financial planner and wealth manager and we help successful American and international families living across the US to make the most of their opportunity and ultimately to retire happier. If you’d like to know more about how we might be able to help you, you can find us on our website, planfirstwealth.com or you can look me up on LinkedIn. Do get in touch. We’d love to hear from you. As always, thank you to the podcast guys for their help producing this episode and the entire show. See you next week.