got creativity?

About the Book

Have you ever wondered where your CREATIVITY has gone? Perhaps you want to become more CREATIVE. Do you have the COURAGE to act on an idea? Michael Balch has written a “notebook” that will test and exercise your CREATIVITY and COURAGE.

Everyone is born with CREATIVITY. We exercise the CREATIVE side of our brain throughout our early childhood, but eventually we go off to formal schooling with an emphasis on standardized testing. It is at that point our CREATIVITY muscle goes dormant. In this “notebook” Michael dives into why we have ignored our CREATIVE muscle and then gives us exercises to wake it up from its deep sleep.

The “notebook” is written as an idea generator. Michael says “uber successful people are either extraordinary or out-of-the-ordinary.” The author inspires and motivates you down a path of out-of-the-ordinary thinking, but leaves it to the reader to write the final chapters. The “notebook” is a living and breathing guide to your future success. It starts you off down a CREATIVE path, but it turns into the readers “book” by the time they finish.

About the Author

Michael Balch has long been on the sales and distribution side of the asset management business. The asset business is littered with mutual funds, separately managed accounts, ETFs, hedge funds and other money managers. There are far more asset management products than there are stocks listed on the New York Stock Exchange. The thing about these money managers is that they are very similar in what they are trying to accomplish. For all intents and purposes, they are just another commodity. The successful companies are the ones that CREATIVELY differentiate themselves from the masses. This is something that Michael has excelled at over his long career. What he does translates beyond the asset management business into most industries. In his field of sales and distribution, Michael is widely known for being CREATIVE, being able to reposition his products in a way that they stand out in the overcrowded world. This ability has won him many awards.
Michael Balch will write, in this “notebook,” about his learning disability and how this worked to his advantage. He was forced to use other skills to survive and then excel at school and in his career.
He went to Indian Mountain School for grade school, where he was diagnosed with Dyslexia. He later learned to overcome his learning disability at Berkshire School (High School) and Lake Forest College.
In business, Michael has overcome this obstacle to succeed with investment firms like Fidelity, Merrill Lynch, Bank of America and Kemper. He took what he learned at these great firms and set out on his own, where he was a founding Partner at NAV Capital before joining Cedar Capital as Partner. He currently resides in Wilmette, IL with his wife and four sons.