I grew up on Long Island and graduated from Adelphi University with a degree in Economics. After three years and a summer, I was able to graduate early.

Before that, while in high school, I signed up for a "Platoon Leaders" course to join the Corps as an officer after college. So I served for three years, including one in Vietnam. In the Marines, the troops eat first and the officers are only as good as the people they command. Former Marines leave with that philosophy and live to serve the people under them. That mindset has followed me throughout my career.

After the service, I worked for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey in international trade for two years. Then, I moved on to Bank of America and attended business school at night. These were the Nixon years, with wage and price controls. So, I started graduate school making $14,200 and reached $14,300 when I obtained my degree. A classmate that I started with was making $7,500 on Wall Street and by the time we both graduated he was up to $110,000. He went from being an over-the-counter trader to a fixed income manager at Lionel Edie, which was a Merrill Lynch subsidiary. He told me there weren't enough smart people on Wall Street and suggested that I look into the industry. Shortly afterward, I took a job at Smith Barney.

My parents had been through the Depression, so when I told them I was leaving the bank to join Smith Barney's brokerage firm, it was the worst thing I could have ever said. But I stayed there for four years and left a year after it merged with Harris, Upham and Company in 1975. That's a clue to my preference for small firms.

Next, I went to Donaldson Lufkin, Jenrette and became managing director of its private client business. Credit Suisse bought Donaldson in 2000, and I stayed on to run its private client group. I retired in July 2003 and not long afterward was recruited for my present job at Dominick & Dominick. I knew that if I was going to work again, I wanted it to be at a small firm so I could run the group the way I wanted.

Undoubtedly, wealth management is a crowded marketplace, but there are not enough qualified professionals to serve it. It's one reason why the price of retail brokers is so high. It's about supply and demand. The broker sales force has gotten older and a lot of experienced people have left the team. There's not enough training as there was in the past.

Small brokers can do the same things as large firms. We don't have the layers of bureaucracy, we don't force our advisors to sell a certain product and we all clear through major firms.

Sometimes you have to decide between working at a job that makes you happy and one that makes you money. If you make the dollars first, then you have the luxury of doing what you really enjoy. My wife and I have been active in philanthropic activities for years. It balances out making money on Wall Street.

As told to Pat Olsen.