Jim Zitek is currently an independent  Investment Advisor with Feltl & Company, a Minneapolis, MN based Securities Brokerage and Investment Banking Firm. He is also a writer and professional speaker.

After serving in the U. S. Marine Corps and graduating from the University of Minnesota, I worked for Honeywell Inc. as a writer/editor where I helped write the management portion of aerospace system proposals out of the marketing department. Later, I worked in the Advertising Department for the Commercial Division. While at Honeywell, I learned to work with engineers and scientists who are the most relative thinking people you will ever meet. I also learned that theories must be based on well-defined, a priori principals, which is much different from most of the thinking today in economics where principals are developed by looking backward at empirical studies.

I later founded a small advertising agency, which I merged a few years later with a larger agency. This new agency worked primarily in broadcast media and our clients ranged from small local companies to large, Fortune 500 companies. I also moved from the creative side to the account side formulating marketing strategy.  
Several years later, I joined one of my client companies, now RBC Dain Rouscher, as an investment executive. Here I learned that consensus thinking could get you into a lot of trouble. That’s when I began to expand my critical thinking skills so I could learn how to get behind the headlines and find the real story. A few years later, I moved to my current position at Feltl & Company, a Twin Cities based securities brokerage and Investment Banking firm.

Over the years I developed a critical thinking process I now use to tear a story apart, analyze its parts and then put the story back together in a more comprehensive, usable way. This helped me understand the different sides of a story so I wasn’t stuck forever in my own paradigm. I also expanded this critical thinking process to include the three principal economic theories. I have also had a long-time interest in future studies and scenario writing.  

I have been speaking to groups for many years in relation to my work, but a few years ago, I started speaking as a volunteer speaker for the Concord Coalition Organization, a nonpartisan, non-profit organization that focuses its attention on America’s unsustainable Federal Budget. I enjoy doing this and have expanded my speaking engagements nationally. I also write a blog titled: Paradigm Adjustment and I am currently working on writing a book.

I am a member of the University of Minnesota Alumni Association, The Ludwig Von Mises Institute, The World Futures Society, the Minnesota Futurists and the Critical Thinking Club (Minneapolis.)