Why perseverance and resilience matter

Jeff Martinovich is based in Norfolk, Virginia and is in the process of rebuilding the lives of his stakeholders, his family, and himself after ten years of challenge! Originally Jeff attended the Air Force Academy in Colorado and served in the First Gulf War at Tactical Air Command Headquarters, Langley, Virginia as part of the F-117 Stealth Fighter programme. On leaving the Air Force, he obtained an MBA in Finance from The College of William and Mary, which led into the roller coaster world of finance for the next two decades.

As a rookie stockbroker, he started at the bottom without any clients, but he considers himself lucky to have worked with some really good people and over the next twenty years built a billion dollar advisory business. By the time of the 2008 financial crisis, they had around a hundred people working for them and clients across the US and abroad. Jeff feels that 99% of the people in the industry really do a good job. At the time, there were a number of changes going on in the financial sector so they found themselves being able to ‘sit on same side of the table’ as their clients. He feels that by aligning the self-interests of people so much can be can accomplished. Through good financial planning, they provided loans, wills, trusts, and insurance to help people achieve their goals. Of course there are some bad apples in the business the same as in any sector, but on the whole Jeff feels the large majority of people work to benefit their clients.

When the 2008 recession hit everything fell apart and they found themselves in the middle of a perfect storm. The firm had grown to be too big not to be on the radar but not big enough to be able to write a $17 billion cheque to the regulators. The Government were giving huge amounts to the major Wall Street firms and then fining them millions back, but as well as this they shut down a large number of ‘second tier’ companies and Jeff’s was one of these.  It was a frenzied situation and the company experienced regulatory scrutiny and allegations about some of the company’s proprietary hedge funds but the company couldn’t see that they or their employees had done anything wrong.  

Jeff had to make a decision. People have moments in their life that are defining, where they have to make a decision and take a stand. Jeff turned down three separate plea offers from the Government and decided to go to trial to defend the company and employees. Five weeks later he was found guilty of not ‘commanding the ship properly’ and sentenced to twelve years in federal prison. Jeff lost the company he had spent thirty years building, but there were a large number of shareholders, stakeholders and employees who were affected. The story hit front page of the newspapers and overnight Jeff went from being a stalwart of the community to pariah.

He had many dark days and questioned himself. Why did I start this journey? What are my core defining values, character and integrity? Jeff feels you have to recentre yourself, to dig deep to find the strength you maybe didn’t even know you had and also that his background in sport, the military and working with start-up businesses, helped prepare him for the difficulties and be strong enough reach into his resilience and perseverance to get through the challenge He was sent to a high security federal prison with 4000 inmates. and feels that his military background helped because he was able to dig deep into his early training. Nobody cares about whether you’ve been a successful businessman and you just have to get through on a day-by-day basis. To try to avoid falling into despair and depression, Jeff committed that each day he would be stronger physically intellectually and emotionally. Took advantage of the break to reassess, to get stronger, smarter and more capable and control of any emotional deviation.

Jeff had to start again at zero. He took a job in the law library and taught himself federal criminal law and by helping 300 other inmates with their cases, he learnt more about his own case.  He started to drive his own defense by learning enough to appeal his case and after three years the decision was reversed. He was preparing to go home and start rebuilding his life when he was given a second indictment primarily to stop him making progress on the original case. At the same time his sentence was increased to 14 years. He went back to prison and started over again. Two years later the case was reversed again with two federal judges being removed from the case. Last May he was finally released after seven years in prison and he’s been working ever since to rebuild and restore helped by his wife, family and friends who have all stood by him.

Jeff feels the keys have been perseverance and resilience. When he looks back the things that happened gave him a path to follow and a way to keep fighting – to take personal responsibility, get up and keep going because challenges help us build so  that we can handle bigger and bigger challenges.

You can listen to the podcast in full and find out further information about Jeff here. Our upcoming guest list is also available along with our previous blogs.

Jeff’s book is Just One More: The Wisdom of Bob Vukovich. Learn more at jeffmartinovich.com