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October 24, 2005
At age 60, David Patterson didn't expect to be building a new business. But then again, he didn't expect a
lot of things during his career.
"You can't depend on any employer these days," Patterson says. "You've got to make sure you have new
skills and continuously prepare yourself in case something happens."
A lot of "somethings" have happened in Patterson's working life. He started out as a computer programmer
for the Pontiac division of General Motors Corp., became a manager, took a two-year posting in Spain,
helped turn around a failing telecom company and then decided to work as a financial planner in
semiretirement.
Now he's back to working nearly full time building a practice with his daughter, who's also a financial
planner.
Change, Patterson says, is just something he's learned to embrace.
"You have to give up something to get what you want, and sometimes you get things you never even
thought about," he says.
Patterson, a Detroit native who now lives in Waterford, graduated from Waterford High School in 1963, then
picked up math degrees from Michigan State and Purdue universities. His Vietnam draft notice showed up
at the same time he had applied to the Navy, so Patterson opted to attend officers' school and teach math
in the nuclear power program.
Three years later, Patterson mustered out and joined Pontiac, where he had worked during college. He
programmed computers, including the machines that ran the assembly line.
"It was kind of a high-pressure system to manage," he says. "If something went wrong they'd call me and
I'd have maybe half an hour to get it fixed or it would shut down the assembly line."
While he could handle the computers just fine, Patterson realized he had no knowledge of business.
Using his veterans benefits, he took night classes at Wayne State University to earn a master's degree in
business.
"There's no question that the fact I got the second master's with a business background helped me in GM
and then later on," he says.
By the early 1980s, Patterson had landed a management-level job, then moved to a corporate position. At
that point, he got an offer to take a GM job in Spain. The invitation came on a Friday afternoon, but he had to
come back with an answer on Monday.
"We took the whole family, lived there for almost three years, and it was probably the best thing that
happened in our life for all of us," Patterson says. "Of course, there were all these people they had asked
before me, who hadn't wanted to take that risk."
It was a risk that seemed to pay off. Once he was back in Michigan, Patterson moved up to the
"unclassified" management level, where he would qualify for hefty bonuses. "I had the position that I'd
worked for all of these years," he says.
But not for long.
"I wasn't back more than a month or two and GM decided to buy EDS from Ross Perot," he says. That
meant all of GM information technology would be managed by its newly acquired Electronic Data Systems.
"My position didn't mean anything anymore."
He moved to EDS, getting stock options that were worth $30,000 to $35,000 per year for 10 years. Five
years, though, was as long as he could stick it out.
"I became so unhappy. I just really disliked EDS and the culture, and the job I'd always wanted wasn't there
any more," he says. "Finally, I just came to realize that the money wasn't worth it. As soon as I did that it
was like someone took a load off my shoulders."
A year later, he was vice president of information technology for Allnet, a struggling Bingham Farms
telecommunications firm.
"It just struck me that they were going to turn that business around," Patterson says. "I decided to give up
the stock options and take the new job, and that if it didn't work out, I could go somewhere else."
Over the next few years, the company came close to bankruptcy several times, he says, before becoming
successful and merging with another telecom firm. At that point, he had the option of leaving with a full year
of pay and benefits. And at age 51, he'd already found another direction to move in.
Patterson had taken financial planning courses over the years, at first just to handle his own finances. He
continued, though, and eventually passed the two 10-hour days of exams needed to qualify as a certified
financial planner.
"Financially, I didn't need to work so I said, 'I'm going to do something new.'"
In the past nine years he has built up a roster of 80 clients, all through word of mouth. Now his daughter
has joined him, and they're working together to build the business up. "I'm going to do this for a while, and
then it's going to be hers."
Looking back, he says, "I've thought about how I got to where I am. It's really two things that made it
happen. One was continuing to learn -- going back and getting the MBA, getting the financial planning
certification, and not necessarily knowing what it would lead to. The other element was being willing to
make changes and take risks at times with something that's unknown to you."
Patterson doesn't totally discount the elements of luck and good timing, either.
"Sometimes I think I've been very fortunate. Going to Allnet was kind of a lucky pick. The other thing was that
I got out of telecom before the whole industry imploded.
"They say you make your own luck, and I think there's some truth to that," he says. "If you do some of these
things, you do have control over how lucky you are."
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Copyright (c) The Detroit News. All rights reserved. Reproduced with the permission of Gannett Co., Inc. by
NewsBank, inc.
Reproduced by Patterson Advisors with permission of the Detroit Free Press
Waterford Man Keeps Taking Risks That Payoff
October 24,2006
The Detroit News
Article by
Brian J. O'Connor
|
Willingness to Learn, Adjust, Builds Success